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Gop)Tightl^?_Jl 



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^ 



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I. The English Patents of Monopoly. ByWU- 
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CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U.S.A. 



HARVARD ECONOMIC STUDIES 

PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF 
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VOL. XXIV ^ 



ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

A STUDY IN THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS 

OF ECONOMIC THEORY, WITH SOME 

REFERENCE TO OTHER SOCIAL SCIENCES 



BY 
ZENAS CLARK DICKINSON, Ph.D. 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS IN THE 
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA 



AWARDED THE DAVID A. WELLS PRIZE FOR 
THE YEAR 1919-20, AND PUBLISHED FROM 
THE INCOME OF THE DAVID A. WELLS FUND 




CAMBRIDGE 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 



1922 






COPYRIGHT, 1922 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 



AUG 31 1922^ 



(g)Cl.A68l575 



PREFACE 

The following essay grew out of a doctoral thesis presented at 
Harvard University in 19 19, and it was submitted in the Wells 
Prize competition in 1920. 

It seems impossible to find a title that accurately and briefly 
covers the field of the inquiry. This field may be called the 
psychological problems and postulates of economics, which are 
most conspicuous, of course, in the matter relating to Wants, 
Self-interest, Value, Interest and Wages. These psychological 
questions are concerned, I believe, not only with seeking the 
chains of causation which make economic behavior what it is, 
and what it might be, but also with examining the effects of 
such activities on human welfare. In other words, it appears 
that there are psychological problems involved in the fullest 
investigation of Production and Economic Welfare, as well as 
of Value and Distribution. 

The main purpose of this essay is to gather up whatever ma- 
terial is to be found in psychological science that offers help in 
dealing with the above problems, and to present this material 
briefly in a manner intelligible to the economist or other social 
scientist. A considerable background of psychological funda- 
mentals is given (in Part II), the relevancy of which may not be 
apparent, for the reason that the psychological vocabularies now 
current in social science discussions are too confused to admit 
of clear statements unless one's own presuppositions are made 
quite explicit. The relevancy of the historical chapters (in Part 
I) to my main purpose may also be questioned, and perhaps they 
are over lengthy. But discussions of our topics in the past have 
clustered largely around the social-psychology dogma that 
economic theory suffers from false assumptions as to the "ration- 
ality" of human behavior in regard to wealth, such misappre- 
hensions being traced usually to the Utilitarians; and since my 



VI PREFACE 

study of associationist and modern psychology convinced me 
that there is very much less discrepancy between the two than 
the above dogma assumes, I thought it worth while to give con- 
siderable space to the matter. 

The conclusion emerges, as might be expected, that psy- 
chological problems of economics are at present to be attacked 
more effectively by the ordinary methods of economic science, 
which consists of statistical analysis of the behavior-data relevant 
to the case, than by means of psychological principles; for psy- 
chologists are making progress in understanding other types of 
behavior by similar statistical analysis. But apparently in every 
field of discovery the collection of facts will be the more enlight- 
ening, the more solidly grounded the collector is in first prin- 
ciples. I think economic psychology is no exception, and it is 
my hope that this volume will contribute something to the wider 
understanding of the needed fundamentals. 

Grateful acknowledgment is made of help received from 
scholars at Harvard, especially Professors Taussig, Carver, and 
Bullock, on the economic side, and Professors Holt and Perry on 
the psychological side. I cannot indicate how much I prize Pro- 
fessor Taussig's inspiration, counsel and encouragement. Among 
my colleagues at the University of Minnesota I must thank 
Professors R. M. Elliott, Mabel Fernald, and F. B. Garver, not 
only for reading the manuscript but for a large measure of sug- 
gestions and encouragement. 

Minneapolis, Minnesota 
April, 1922. 



CONTENTS 

PART I 
INTRODUCTION AND HISTORICAL APPROACH 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Human Nature in Economics 3 

II. Common-Sense Analysis of Motives 16 

III. Associationist-Hedonism: Aristotle, Hobbes ... 26 

IV. The Psychology of Adam Smith 43 

V. The Utilitarian Psychology: Jeremy Bentham . 54 

VI. Utilitarian Psychology: The Two Mills and Bain . 67 

PART II 
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES 

VII. The Newer Point of View in Psychology .... 83 

VIII. Instincts, Aptitudes and Appetites, in General . 92 

IX. The Human Instincts and Aptitudes 109 

X. Emotion, Pleasure and Pain 131 

XL The Learning Process 144 

Xll. Learning, Reasoning and Rationality 163 

XIII. How May New Motives be Instilled? 196 

PART III 

SOME APPLICATIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY TO PROBLEMS OF 
ECONOMIC THEORY 

XIV. The Present State of Economic Psychology. . . 205 
XV. Applications to Economic Wants 207 

XVI. Utility and Cost 229 

XVII. Psychology of the Valuation Process 239 

XVIII. Psychology in Saving 254 

XIX. Work 270 

INDEX 297 

vii 



For men have entered into a desire of learning and knowl- 
edge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive 
appetite: sometimes to entertain their minds with variety 
and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and 
sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradic- 
tion; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom 
sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the 
benefit and use of men: as if there were sought in knowledge 
a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or 
a tarrasse, for a wandering and variable mind to walk up 
and down with a fair prospect; or a tower of state, for a 
proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding 
ground, for strife and contention; or a shop, for profit or 
sale; and not a rich storehouse, for the glory of the Creator 
and the relief of man's estate. 

Bacon : Advancement of Learning, Bk. I. 



PART I 

INTRODUCTION AND HISTORICAL 
APPROACH 



CHAPTER I 

HUMAN NATURE IN ECONOMICS 

Mental and Physical Foundations 

The object of this essay is to continue and bring down to date 
the old discussion of the constitution of human nature. While 
we are interested primarily in that part of the discussion which 
has significance for economics, yet it seems possible that our 
analysis may be helpful to a wider circle than just the economists. 
For when the present writer set himself to investigate the specifi- 
cally economic motives, he found so little agreement on the fun- 
damentals of social psychology involved that a reexamination 
of these fundamentals appeared to be necessary, and such a 
restatement constitutes the greater part of the essay. That these 
foundations are of considerable importance for psychology, 
ethics, and social science and art generally has been shown 
especially in the last decade, by the enthusiastic reception ac- 
corded to McDougall's Social Psychology. 

In what connections are questions of human nature important 
for economics? This question must be answered at the outset, 
for there are many economists who believe that economics has 
little to gain from psychological importations. And, in indicating 
where psychological assumptions (whether accurate or inac- 
curate) are actually employed in this science, we can incidentally 
suggest some of the other social problems which involve exactly 
the same questions of human nature. 

Logically the first step toward explaining the economic world is 
to explain the wants which broadly determine what goods shall be 
produced. There are, to be sure, other motives in production too; 
the want of poor John Jones for street-car service does not move 
the productive resources nearly so much as does rich Tom 
Trout's demand for transportation by limousine. But in a larger 
view the wants of consumers for moving-picture amusement 



4 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

cause men and money to turn out celluloid and studios, and other 
wants give rise to other industries. Hence many economic writers 
begin their treatises with this topic of Wants. It is closely related 
to the subject of Consumption of Wealth; the outstanding prob- 
lem of both being to find why people want just what they do 
today — Teddy bears, or admission to professional baseball 
games, for example — and turn up their noses at things they 
wanted a year or a century ago, — say babies' cradles or detach- 
able cuffs. Such an inquiry into the nature and natural history of 
economic wants soon pushes the student back to the psycho- 
logical entities of instincts, ideas, association or what not, — 
questions of human nature. 

Let us recognize at once that an economic treatment of con- 
sumption includes much matter which is in no wise psychological, 
for it goes on to show what are the long-run effects of wants (for 
necessities, luxuries and so forth) on the people who are actuated 
by them. It is one thing to show why people wish to act so and so, 
— to save part of their income, for example, or to live it all up 
as they go. It is another thing, and quite independent of their 
wishes, to show what happens to them as a result of their acts, in 
each case. This is one illustration of the general truth that the 
foundations of economics are only partially in human nature; 
they are also laid in the external world which goes its way 
whether we like it or not.^ 

It is materials of the latter nature which are chiefly used in the 
traditional sections on Production and Exchange. As John Stuart 
Mill put it (perhaps too strongly), the economic principles in these 
divisions "have nothing optional about them," they are but 
elaborations of the data of physics, geology and biology. The 
advantages of division of labor, for instance, and of capital equip- 
ment (tools and machinery) ; the ' diminishing returns ' of agri- 

"■ ' Psychological ' and ' physical ' causes are presumably not ultimately dif- 
ferent in nature. The qualification psychological as herein used means only that a 
human reaction or mental act is directly involved. It is doubtless true that one's 
motives, behefs, tendencies or whatever the human springs of action be called, 
receive all their qualities ultimately from physical nature, partly by way of the 
molding effect of his environment (physical and social) and partly by way of natural 
selection or similar influences on his ancestors. 



HUMAN NATURE IN ECONOMICS 5 

cultural produce per unit of capital and labor, as soil is more 
intensively cultivated; the economies of large-scale production 
through diminishing quota of overhead expense to the unit of out- 
put (' increasing returns ') ; the dependence of prices on quantity 
of money; — these are among the more important orthodox eco- 
nomic laws which apparently can be little affected by changes in 
the winds of psychological doctrine. 

Nevertheless there are psychological problems even in these 
sections. Adam Smith raised one when he attempted to explain 
how division of labor had originally come about. 

This division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is not 
originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that 
general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary, though very 
slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which 
has in view no such extensive utiUty; the propensity to truck, barter, and 
exchange one thing for another.^- 

Of course Smith was a psychologist — an uncommonly good one 
— and it might be said that he dragged these observations into his 
economics unnecessarily. What do we care how it all came about? 
Possibly nothing; but on the solution of a closely related problem 
may hang life or death, comfort or misery, for millions of people in 
the future. This problem is the part played by human nature in 
improvements of the arts, — in mechanical or other invention. 
We all talk ghbly of the wonderful ' labor-saving machinery ' 
which is still to come forth, but how can we best assure that it will 
come? Does ' capitalism,' independent enterprise, patent monop- 
oly, public or private research agencies, or some other means, best 
promote such advances? Economics can assist in answering 
questions like these only in proportion to its achievement of an 
increasingly accurate explanation of production, including the 
motives of inventors and other producers.^ 

Another portentous psychological issue raised in the study of 
production is this: What effect has the minute subdivision of 
tasks on the mental health and happiness of the humble worker? 
Many observers think, as Mill did at one time, that the monotony 

* Wealth of Nations (1776), Book I, ch. ii. 

^ Cf. L. Wolman, "The Theory of Production," Am. Ec. Rev. Supplement for 
March, 1921. 



6 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

and fatigue attributable to machinery offsets its advantage in 
productiveness. Again the economist may say that this is a 
sociological or ethical or medical question, and so is beyond his 
province. Undoubtedly many of the special investigations neces- 
sary for answering the question are beyond his technique, but 
even if he refrains entirely from pronouncements on economic 
welfare (few economists do so refrain) , such effects on the worker 
should be considered so far as they reduce his economic pro- 
ductivity. 

Value is the central problem of economics. Production follows 
values, even if these are expressed by ballots instead of by pur- 
chases; and Distribution into Rent, Interest, Wages and Profits is 
merely a matter of the value of land, loans and kinds of labor. 
As Mill saw, psychological and social factors are especially im- 
portant in this division. The individual's evaluation of alter- 
native purchases seems preeminently a mental act, a matter of 
choosing or deciding how many apples or doughnuts he wants just 
as much as he wants a dime, — how many A are just as valuable 
to him as B. This individual subjective process is studied by 
economists principally for the purpose of explaining the fluc- 
tuations of market exchange values, that is, to ascertain as 
completely as possible why a bushel of wheat, say, becomes ex- 
changeable for two chickens now, whereas a year ago it would 
buy but one. 

The older economists — Ricardo conspicuously — maintained 
a labor theory of value, to the effect that things exchange, on the 
whole, in proportion to the labor-times required in their produc- 
tion. This theory proved so inexact as to be nearly worthless 
except to the Socialists for propaganda; and the supplementary 
marginal utility theory of Gossen, Menger and Jevons (187 1) is 
one of the great triumphs of economic science. The latter states 
that goods are not valued because they have cost labor, — for 
example, land and many other objects which are gifts of nature 
are valuable, simply because they are so scarce as not to satisfy all 
wants for them; but labor is valuable because of the goods it is the 
means toward getting. The key to value, then, is in wants and in 
the way that any one of them becomes progressively ' saturated ' 



HUMAN NATURE IN ECONOMICS 7 

as successive units of the same good are possessed (diminishing 
utility). We are not attempting a discourse on value here, our 
point is that economic discussions of value have become much 
occupied with this psychology of wants and of choice ; so much so 
that a large group of economists who specialize on the subject of 
value are called the "Psychological School." 

Beyond this branch of the general theory of value, the lore of 
motives looms large in discussions of the special values of capital 
and labor; or let us rather say in respect to matters of public 
policy based on these branches of the theory. The economic dis- 
tinction between interest and rent is chiefly a matter of motives, 
in that the supply of capital (savings out of which new buildings, 
machinery, etc., can be provided) appears to be kept up only on 
condition that interest is paid to savers; whereas the amount of 
land is practically a fixed quantity regardless of whether private 
property is permitted in it and rent paid to the owners. It seems 
even clearer that labor will not be forthcoming unless wages are to 
be paid for it, and that if the employer is to take the chief risks of 
loss in carrying on production, he must be induced to do so by 
prospects of possible profits. 

But of late years it has become orthodox economic doctrine 
that there are ' rents ' in interest, wages and profits, as well as in 
the rent of land. What is the distinguishing feature of this com- 
mon element? It is the amount which the capitaHst or laborer can 
get for his service (at the market rate which is uniform for all like 
services) , which is in excess of the least he would be willing to sell 
it for if he could not get more. Much of the interest paid on the 
accumulations both of the poor and of the rich is of this character; 
the poor save for a rainy day, and the rich save from force of 
habit, — in either case the amount of principal saved would be 
about the same if interest were half or a quarter what it is. In the 
same way there are numerous men of talent in business, in the 
professions or in art, who would do just as good work if the market 
value of their services happened to be half or a hundredth what it 
is. Caruso presumably would have caroled just as melodiously 
if the riches of America had not existed and he could sing only to 
his poorer countrymen in Italy. The fortunate possessor of talent 



8 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

or capital often gets the same kind of lucky ' rent/ therefore, as 
does the owner of a farm on which oil is discovered. And a great 
part of the significance of distribution theory depends on the 
assumptions as to producers' motives with which you start. 

Here again, however, the economist must have his eye on some 
external necessities which are not psychological, and cannot be 
changed by wishing. One of the chief of these is the principle of 
Proportionality, or ' diminishing productivity,' out of which the 
famous ' specific productivity ' theory of distribution was for- 
mulated by Clark. For the production of any consumable good 
numerous ingredients are necessary, including different kinds of 
labor. The proportion in which these ingredients may be used 
is usually not fixed; one may farm with much land and little 
capital and labor, or with much capital (tools) relatively to the 
others, or with varying proportions of skilled to unskilled men, 
and so on. By successively increasing the use of any one ingre- 
dient, all others remaining the same, the total product will be 
increased for a time at each step, but at a diminishing rate. 
Finally more land or machinery or one kind of labor will not result 
in any increase at all. Hence if the farmer is to be induced to buy 
anything which he already has in abundance (relatively to the 
factors with which he must combine it), this article must be 
offered him at a lower and lower price, until finally he will give 
nothing at all for more of it. It will be superabundant, as water is 
to some farmers, or apples rotting on the trees. In these circum- 
stances, whatever water or apples or land he can use are physically 
just as necessary as any other ingredient in his process, and just as 
meritorious from a moral point of view, but it is impossible to 
conceive of his going into the market outside and buying more of 
them, for more would be of no use to him. He would spend his 
money on the scarcer elements, which would mean an increase in 
his final product. We must look for a strain of this policy to run 
through his acts, even though he makes mistakes in detail, and 
we assume he will always have his eye on the largest profit, which 
represents goods that consumers most want. (This assumption, 
however, is getting back to psychologizing.) So that all values of 
producers' goods, including the value of a given kind of labor, are 



HUMAN NATURE IN ECONOMICS 9 

governed by technical conditions quite as much as by the whims 
of the buyers ; which is a more accurate way of saying that value 
depends on supply and demand. 

If the value of common labor or of school teachers is low, there- 
fore, we must inquire how the supply of it got out of proportion to 
the more highly paid labor which is required in conjunction with 
it. We are thus presently led into the subject of Population, and 
the Malthusian discussion. The older economists prophesied, 
from what they saw of the facts of animal fertility, that wages 
must always remain near the minimum of subsistence, since if 
more were secured, population could increase until wages were 
brought down again. That was the purport of Ricardo's Iron 
Law of Wages. But the declining birth rates in all civilized coun- 
tries over the past fifty years, with France's population now 
nearly stationary — and in the face of a considerably higher level 
of real wages than the preceding century knew — has called at- 
tention to the psychological factors of the Standard of Living and 
Birth Control, which must be studied in relation to the theory of 
wages. 

Practical Uses or Knowledge of Motives 

So much for the more important psychological issues of eco- 
nomic theory. Though it is hard for most readers to avoid being 
deceived, by the abstract language of science, into thinking of 
these as mere ' academic questions,' we must, in the interests of 
economy of space, forbear to trace their emergence into such 
practical issues as tax systems, poor laws, trade policies, public 
regulations on business, state ownership of railroads or other 
means of production, and the whole general issue of collectivism 
vs. individualism. Taussig, discussing Socialism, says : 

The questions between private property and socialism are thus at bottom 
questions as to men's character, motives, ideals. They are questions, in so 
far, of psychology; in more famUiar language, of human nature. They are 
not simple, but highly complex; because human nature is highly complex.^ 

His two chapters on this subject would perhaps be the best intro- 
duction to our study, especially since they inspired the present 

^ Principles of Economics, Ch. 65, sec. 6. Compare the excellent discussion, in 
the same spirit, in A. Wagner, Grundlegung der polit. Okonomie, 3d ed. (1892), 
pp. 72 ff. 



lO ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

writer to undertake it. In politics, education, ethics — in the 
study of human affairs generally — the larger problems are still 
those questions of human nature with which Plato and his pred- 
ecessors grappled : what is constant, what is variable and how is 
it variable, in man's mental endowment? Why do men fight? has 
been the stumbling block of schemes for international organiza- 
tion throughout the centuries, and of many other projects of 
brotherly love. Are some children innately more ' worth ' educat- 
ing than others? At least, how may education and industry be 
best adjusted to their (supposedly) different natural capacities? 
Two branches of business psychology, having large money-making 
potentialities, also depend on these same fundamentals, — we 
refer to advertising and employment psychology. 

Considering, then, the import which the obscure laws of human 
nature have for all our social institutions and even for private 
prosperity, we may condone somewhat the unbalanced exploita- 
tions of alleged discoveries in psychology which we see about us 
every day; and, realizing that it is hopeless to expect to answer 
most of the questions we have raised, do what we can toward 
fitting together whatever fragments can be found of the master 
key that will fit all these locks. 

Now the objection may be raised by others than economists — 
and it is sure to be raised by many of the latter — that while all 
we have said may be true, there is still no evidence that econ- 
omists have anything to gain from excursions into psychology. 
They (the economists) often speak of * the economic motive,' 
meaning the general desire for more wealth, as distinguished from 
the motives of family, conscience, and so on, and then say that 
economics seeks only propositions which follow from this one 
powerful force (comparable, say, to gravitation), without denying 
that there are ' disturbing,' unbusiness-like motives, which make 
economic life in detail a little different from what it would be if all 
people were actually moved only by the desire to make money. 
Such was, theoretically, the position of leaders like Senior, Mill 
and Bagehot. It seems obvious that in modern business, at least, 
the most important single key to men's doings is search for the 
greatest gain; and so economics, the science of business, may take 



HUMAN NATURE IN ECONOMICS II 

this motive for granted, and leave to speculative dreamers the 
task of philosophizing over what men want money for. And 
similarly the practical man may say that the principle of self- 
interest — ' people are out for all they can get ' — is a good 
enough key to human affairs for him. 

The economists of an earlier day deliberately connected their 
theory on this point with the doctrine of motives generally 
believed by philosophers of the time, called Psychological He- 
donism. This doctrine avers that all men act cannily to secure 
the greatest possible pleasure or, what was supposed to come to 
the same thing, the most complete exemption from pain. Any 
person was supposed, that is, before willing any action, to make a 
quick calculation of the probable results in pleasure or pain to 
himself of each of the possible courses he might take, and then to 
choose and carry out that course which promises the largest he- 
donic results. So that the philosopher-economists no less than the 
business-men-economists of the time, found it easy to assume 
that the pursuit of ' utiHty,' ' pleasure,' ' wealth,' all mean about 
the same thing, and all are carried on rationally, calculatingly, by 
mankind in general. 

Everyone will see, however, if he stops to think, that theory on 
this simple premise of motivation is but a rough approximation, 
and often badly misleading in practice. 

Many of us are willing enough to believe that certain socialistic 
leaders are actuated only by gain-seeking, but we protest vig- 
orously against their ' economic determinism ' so far as it means 
that we are fighting merely to hang onto our ' privileges ' and are 
' exploiting ' every other human being so far as we possibly can. 
When the nation is in danger, or some catastrophe has made 
thousands hungry or homeless, do we think it vain to appeal to 
other than mercenary motives? It is only by a shrewd knowledge 
of the human springs of action which will cause large numbers to 
act against their economic advantage, that such enterprises can 
be carried on. War and extraordinary distress are not the typical 
situations, is the reply usually given by economists. What 
people will do in such times they will not do in ordinary business. 
That is true, but are we so sure of what human nature is ulti- 



12 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

mately capable, in ordinary business? Is it so certain that pa- 
triotism cannot some day be invoked by everyday tasks? 

And even at the level of everyday business Hfe, there are many 
observers who contend that economic self-interest by no means 
furnishes the main clue to men's actions. A certain large de- 
partment store, for example, allows none of its buyers or other 
representatives to travel on Sunday, and since but few outsiders 
are aware of this rather expensive policy, it cannot be attributed 
to clever advertising. Many other examples of conscientious 
scruples thwarting the motive of gain might easily be collected. 
Or consider the case of powerful daily newspapers, having lists of 
the proprietor's personal enemies who are not on any account to 
be mentioned favorably. A certain highly successful motor-car 
manufacturer is reported to be implementing his vast business 
organization in a bitter anti-semitic campaign upon which he be- 
came launched apparently by personal associations. Consulting 
experts in business organization testify that practically every 
large concern they enter is honeycombed with prejudices, jeal- 
ousies and cliques which must be analyzed and taken account of 
before purely efficiency measures can be suggested. Labor con- 
ciliators say that pride, resentment, the itch for power, are often 
more important in disputes than the dollars and cents at stake. 

On the other hand, instances may be multiplied in which bus- 
iness men have learned to increase their profits by analyzing out 
some of the ' human nature ' quirks of the people they deal with.^ 

The salesman long ago found the theory of one economic mo- 
tive, self-interest, too simple for his purposes, and so he turned to 
psychological inquiry to discover how he might persuade people 
to buy his article at a higher price rather than a competing article 
just as good for a lower price. The employer is just beginning to 
find that his labor problems do not turn entirely on wages, and is 
developing incentives such as pride in the business, approbation 
for good work, or a variety of tasks for each worker. 

Considerations like these have tended to discredit the old he- 
donist psychology, and have raised a host of critics in the eco- 
nomic world against many points of economic doctrine which 

1 See, for instance, Fred C. Kelley, Business Profits and Human Nature. 



HUMAN NATURE IN ECONOMICS 1 3 

they consider based on an ' exploded ' psychology. These attacks 
are often met by the statement that economics takes as premises 
only what men are seen to do, and consequently is not involved in 
psychological disputes as to why they act.^ 

As will appear in Part III of the present work, we consider that 
there is a large field in economics for which the reply just noticed 
is valid; in which the economist need no more worry about the 
ultimate facts of the spiritual nature of man than the carpenter 
concerns himself about the higher chemistry of wood. At the 
same time, as we have attempted above to show, economic ex- 
planation, even as it is most narrowly conceived, does bristle 
with premises that are really psychological, in which it is a ques- 
tion of fact whether the hedonist assumption or some quite dif- 
ferent version is true, and on the answer to which the accuracy of 
the economic principle depends. Some of these are narrow and 
specific questions, such as. How far do the facts of industry bear 
out the marginal utility theory of value? — while others are vague 
and general, like Is self-interest ineradicable? 

In general it may be said that increased accuracy in explana- 
tion of the processes of human behavior will bring forth more 
effective practical control in all the social fields, just as the art of 
medicine is continually improved by physiological research, or the 
arts of engineering and carpentry by physical research ; but this is 
possible only on the condition that some one carries the results of 
the pure sciences which are relevant, over to the practical fields in 
such form that they may be of use. 

Psychology AND Economics Both 'Behaviorist' Sciences 

One more scruple of the economist may be noticed. He is per- 
haps doubtful if psychology has really been working on problems 
that are relevant to economics. We venture to say there are much 

^ See "The Relations of Recent Psychological Developments to Economic 
Theory," by the present writer, in Quar. Jour. Econ., May, 1919, for a fuller and 
more technical examination of this controversy. It is because of this long dispute 
that we give so much attention below to the subject of hedonism and ' rationality.' 
The subject is a crucial one, however, in other connections than economic, — 
especially in political theory. See, for example, G. Wallas, Human Nature in 
Politics and The Great Society. 



14 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

closer relations between the methods and subject-matter of the 
two sciences than is usually realized. 

In the first place, the human want is a central unit for both 
sciences ; one might almost say that both are built around it. The 
economist observes that people want to possess and consume cer- 
tain objects such as food, or services such as barbering, and that 
these wants drive them into the activities of production. Con- 
versely, production and value are definable in terms of wants, 
rather than of any special type of mechanical performance. Eco- 
nomic wants, we may say, are easily inferred from what men do, 
and economics as a science deals with the activities of men toward 
satisfying such desires. 

What is the psychologist's business with wants? He uses the 
term response or motive to designate an entity which is essentially 
the same as that we call ' want ' ; and he points out that any re- 
sponse involves three elements (besides the living organism who is 
its subject) : The stimulus, or outer object upon which this re- 
sponse hinges, the mode of response, or what the organism does 
when the stimulus is presented, and the neuro-muscular mech- 
anism, by which such behavior is elicited. A response, the psy- 
chologist is now careful to point out, is not to be thought of 
merely as an activity; it may exist merely as potential behavior 
which the mechanism is set to execute whenever the stimulus 
shall appear. Thus it becomes clear that this ' response ' is our 
' want.' And psychology tries to explain the general principles of 
response, by observing all three of these elements.^ 

The economist, therefore, is a psychologist in spite of himself, 
engaged in explaining a special type of behavior, with his eye on 
the stimuli (wealth, and the various other features of the en- 

^ See E. B. Holt, The Freudian Wish (1915), for a readable psychological exposi- 
tion along this line. The reader may not be able to harmonize our account with the 
psychology of sensations, feelings, consciousness, which he has perhaps cultivated, 
but the substantial identity of the two will be brought out in the following chapters. 
Briefly it may be said that sensation generally parallels response, so that the same 
phenomenon may be viewed either subjectively, as what the subject ' feels,' ' thinks,' 
etc., or objectively (from the ' behaviorist ' standpoint), as what he 'does.' As 
Woodworth points out (Dynamic Psychology (191 8), pp. 34, 35), the business of 
psychology has always been to investigate the ' workings of the mind,' so as to learn 
how people come to feel and act as they do. 



HUMAN NATURE IN ECONOMICS 1 5 

viromnent), and on the behavior they elicit from his subjects. It 
is questionable only if he may derive anything from consideration 
of the physiological mechanisms involved. Psychologists will 
testify, however, that their science has made most progress to- 
ward explaining the relations between stimuli and behavior since 
it has given attention to this minute machinery; and correspond- 
ingly, reasons will become apparent as we proceed why a mini- 
mum of familiarity with these remote processes will promote 
better understanding of the larger behavior by the social scientist 
too. 



CHAPTER II 

COMMON-SENSE ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES 

Sources of Material 

We have indicated in a general way how the psychological anal- 
ysis of human motives may be of use to the social sciences, in 
particular to economics. We now enter upon such an analysis, in 
the hope of making a little progress on the old questions: What are 
the hidden springs which cause people to work and play, to save 
and spend, and otherwise to behave as they do? According to 
what principles, if any, do their motives grow and decay? Not 
only the questions themselves, but most of the answers still of- 
fered to them are as old as tradition. They have been discussed 
by wise men in every age, and so our first puzzle is concerning the 
selection of material. 

Since people have always had a deep interest in their own mo- 
tives, and especially in the motives of their fellowmen (knowing 
that a man's conduct depends on what is in his heart), we find 
shrewd observations on character and on the leading ' passions ' 
of human nature scattered throughout the whole of recorded 
literature. These observations show impressively how little the 
leading complexes of motives have changed since men began to 
write down their thoughts. One wonders if a year has passed 
since Plato wrote his Republic, in which some reader has not ex- 
claimed "That might have been written only yesterday! " John 
Stuart Mill, in outlining the science of character or ' Ethology,' 
considered these ' empirical' observations indispensable for such 
a science.^ A British psychologist recently writing on the subject 
has adopted Mill's plan,^ and turned to the poets for classic in- 
formation. History and biography of course are full of evidence 
on motives; Taussig used such testimony effectively in discussing 
the psychology of the inventor. One always turns to a Napoleon 

^ Logic, Book VI, chs. iii and v. 
* A. F. Shand, Foundations of Character (1914). 
16 



COMMON-SENSE ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES ly 

or Socrates for an example of human incentives working out in a 
large way. 

In the old maxims and theorizings, however, there are many- 
contradictions and especially many half-truths, while in personal 
reminiscences there is the coloring of prejudice and apology; so 
that the importance of Mill's second specification for an ethology 
becomes apparent : the empirical observations must be checked up 
by the ' laws of mind,' — that is, by the science of psychology. 
The latter's method is empirical too, but its empiricism is under 
controlled, standardized, repeatable conditions. 

The general subject of motives has received its fullest treatment 
in the past, however, at the hands of moralists. From Socrates 
and Plato down to Sidgwick and Green, these authorities, who 
were usually also political theorists, have been formulating ex- 
plicit theories of human nature to serve as foundations for their 
various ethical and political doctrines. We summarize some of 
these old formulations in our next two chapters, partly on account 
of their historical connection with economic theory, and partly 
because the older philosophers were among the keenest observers 
of men, and their answers to the fundamental questions give us a 
good introduction to our subject as weU as a condensed picture of 
the human nature they saw about them. The ethical writers, 
however, are apt to be biased in their psychology by their meta- 
physical preconceptions; and it is only in the last fifty years, that 
there has split off from ethics a treatment of human motives in 
which the dominant interest is what actually does make men act, 
rather than how they should act. The Mills, Bain and James, 
for instance, were scientific psychologists as well as moralists. 
McDougall, in his Social Psychology (1908), complained that 
professional psychologists had left the study of the human springs 
of action to ethical writers until this province was *'the most 
backward dej>artment in psychology." As we shall see in a mo- 
ment, a complete theory of action, or of motives, requires a com- 
plete psychology, so that there was some excuse for the backward 
condition he lamented. Nevertheless it was high time for one of 
the craft to gather up what was known on the subject, and espe- 
cially to put it into such form as is useful to the social sciences. 



1 8 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

McDougall has therefore earned the gratitude of every student of 
these disciplines. It is questionable if there is not more of the 
whole truth in William James than in McDougall, but James' 
catholicity, which makes him such a fertile source of suggestions 
today, made him entertain a large number of contradictory doc- 
trines, while McDougall, if one-sided, is consistent. 

In the present analysis we are obliged to neglect the older and 
wider sources of material just mentioned (except classical mor- 
alists considered in the next two chapters), because the scientific 
psychological work of the last thirty or forty years is so volumi- 
nous that we shall be able to use only a small part of it, and because 
its methods seem to promise the most help in the future. The 
maxims of shrewd, ancient common sense are always sufficient for 
many purposes, but the more careful, repeated, quantitative 
observations of isolated parts of the phenomena, which char- 
acterize scientific method, usually give us in the end still larger 
control over nature. The old bridges and canals, the housewife's 
primitive hygienic practices, the farmer's or seaman's skill in 
forecasting the weather, all owe little or nothing to science in the 
modern sense; but we have had better bridges and medicine since 
the conditions have been studied scientifically, and we hope 
therefore that some day we shall be able better to predict the 
weather and also human responses to given stimuli, by reason of 
the minute and fragmentary researches of the specialists.^ Yet 
as our conclusions will indicate, psychology is still so far from 
supplying adequate answers to the large questions of human 
nature which we have raised, particularly as to the relative 
strength of motives, or the exact contributions of instinct and ex- 
perience, that for most purposes of social art the data of the other 
social sciences, and the wisdom of men of affairs are as yet the 
best guide to be had. What we may draw from psychology now is 
mainly in the nature of suggestive hypotheses for further investi- 
gation. 

1 Graham Wallas, in Human Nature in Politics, Pt. I, ch. v, shows the advan- 
tages of the quantitative character of modern social knowledge. It is usually more 
helpful to show in what proportions certain things are desirable or in existence than 
simply that they are needed or do exist. Mr. Wallas cites the equilibrium curves of 
economics as an example of this quantitative scientific method. 



COMMON-SENSE ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES 19 

Fundamentals of All Motives Needed 

Since we have just been speaking of the human motives in a 
very general, inclusive way, we may be reproached at once for 
wandering into fields irrelevant to economic motives. The desires 
with which the sages and moralists have to deal are of one kind, 
we may be told, but those of interest to the economist are an- 
other. The ' desire for wealth ' is often spoken of as the economic 
motive. But does it appear that there is any human incentive 
which may not at times give rise to economic activity? The 
desire for wealth is not an elementary desire ; it is a compound 
including at various times the love of family, the desire for esteem 
by one's fellows, the hunger for creature comforts and for objects 
of beauty, and very likely numerous others. A man's wants for 
economic goods and his consequent responses to the bribe of 
wealth, are always sophisticated, they are the joint product of his 
native instincts and sensibilities, and of his material and social 
environment. Differences in these factors, which include moral, 
religious and esthetic suggestions, make the missionary's desire 
for wealth of quite another hue than the worlding's, and the in- 
dolent savage's economic motives remote from those of the 
apostle of industrial progress. Finally, there are motives which 
cannot be included in the desire for wealth, which are still eco- 
nomic, such as the creative bent or ' instinct of workmanship,' the 
fear of corporal punishment, and the desire for social approval of 
one's eforts, as distinguished from approval of his acquisition} 
We must, therefore, investigate as best we can the fundamentals 
of the whole theory of action, although a complete theory of 
action would mean a complete and perfect psychology. 

What are the fundamental factors which determine our be- 
havior? If we examine more closely the common-sense doctrine 
of psychological hedonism, we shall get some suggestions as to 
how the search must proceed. 

^ Compare Fetter, Principles of Economics (1905), p. 14: "whatever motive in 
man's complex nature makes him desire things more or less, becomes for the time, 
and in so far, an economic motive." E. g., he points out, a religious attitude 
toward fish aflfects the fish market. 



20 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

The explanation that people usually act to secure pleasure and 
to avoid pain has always suggested itself spontaneously whenever 
the inquiry as to the natural grounds of action was raised. The 
general conformity of this view with the facts of experience is so 
marked that it need only be stated to win the assent of a person 
not already corrupted by philosophy. And so there have been 
bold generalizers throughout all ages who asserted not only that 
people generally act for the sake of hedonic consequences but that 
always they do. "Nature has placed mankind under two sov- 
ereign masters, pain and pleasure," as Bentham said. As we have 
already observed, objectors then come forward with many ex- 
amples of conduct which is not actuated by the prospect of 
pleasant consequences to the agent, and ask the hedonists what 
they are going to do about these. The object of one's action may 
be the advancement of another person's happiness or the realiza- 
tion of an abstract ideal, and it may be at the cost of the agent's 
own happiness (or pleasure) ; or the act may be due to nothing 
more than unreflecting habit; or perhaps it was just upon an im- 
pulse of which the agent could give no account except that he had 
to obey it. 

Then the hedonist is likely to twist his argument into another 
form. Th-e future pleasure of the agent is not what motivates him, 
perhaps, but that course of action is chosen which is most agree- 
able for the moment. The consequences may prove thoroughly 
disagreeable to him, but his action is nevertheless in the line of 
least resistance. Howard spent an apparently miserable life de- 
voted to prison reform; that however was the life he found it 
pleasant to choose. 

Both hedonistic theories at this stage are reasoning in a circle : 
A man does that which is pleasant to him, either in the wilhng or 
in the consequences. And what is pleasant to him? That which 
he does. There is no independent entity, in terms of which both 
' pleasure ' and 'will' may be explained. The opponents of he- 
donism likewise must exhibit indisputably simpler determinants 
of action, not related to pleasure and pain, in order to advance the 
discussion. How comes about the attachment of ' self-realiza- 
tion ' desire to certain lines of conduct? Whence comes the exist- 



COMMON-SENSE ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES 21 

ence and power of ' ideas ' which successfully oppose pleasure and 
pain, according to the ' ideomotor ' theories? And so on. 

Can we say, then, that the hedonistic explanation of motives 
which the Bentham school popularized was no explanation at all 
but a mere circular reasoning? By no means. For they exhibited 
an element of pleasure simpler than that of any concrete action, 
namely, the pleasure of the simple bodily sensation.^ Assuming 
this element and the principle of ' association of ideas,' whose far- 
reaching effects were just beginning to be appreciated, they 
taught that all motives, however unsensuous in their full bloom 
they may seem to be, are really produced by associations of 
pleasant or painful sensations in the agent's own personal ex- 
perience. The force of association is so powerful between mental 
states (ideas) which are experienced close together in time, that 
pleasure comes to be felt in a pursuit of an object originally indif- 
ferent to the agent, simply because he has experienced it a number 
of times in association with some other event that was intrin- 
sically pleasant. And contrariwise originally pleasant associa- 
tions may fix a habit so firmly that it will move the agent after the 
pleasant associations have disappeared. 

It may be, of course, that all motives cannot be fitted inter such 
a simple formula, but at least the psychological hedonism of the 
Utilitarians, which attempts to analyze complex motives into the 
feeling-tone of simple sensations, by means of the principle of 
association, proposes an analysis which is highly valuable if it is 
accurate. It makes the elementary motives much fewer than can 
be discovered by adult introspection, and it offers almost un- 
limited possibihties for social control through artificial associa- 
tion, — that is to say, through education. If the analysis is not 
universally true, perhaps it may be valid within a limited sphere, 
and in so far useful. We shall find, in fact, this question of the 

^ Even this conception is not so unambiguous as it seems, as will appear when we 
consider pain and pleasure, pleasantness and unpleasantness, more in detail. The 
sensation of pain is sometimes pleasant. But it is fairly accurate to say that the 
simple sensations are either pleasant, painful (unpleasant) or indifferent. It is more 
doubtful if all states of feeling are thus accounted for by the tones of elementary 
sensations, but for the present let us assume that all kinds of pleasures have the 
same general effect on action, and that all classes of unpleasantness or pain have the 
opposite general effect. 



22 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

role of pleasure and pain as determinants of human behavior 
running like a thread through all psychological discussions of the 
springs of action ; and it will appear that a completely satisfactory 
explanation of the facts has never been found. There is also the 
related problem of the emotions, with their characteristic bodily 
expressions; they have long been believed potent movers to 
action. 

Beside the pains and pleasures of sensation, there are several 
other mental entities which have always been staple articles in the 
theory of motives. Men certainly do not always act for the sake 
of immediate pleasures, and moreover they have knowledge which 
seems distinct from feeling, and which frequently influences their 
conduct by considerations of future interests causing the sacrifice 
of present pleasure for the sake of future gains. And so we have 
to deal with the intellect, or cognition, or the special part of it 
called * the reason.' The qualities of sensation (such as light, 
sound or touch, considered apart from their agreeableness or dis- 
agreeableness) give us immediate knowledge of the world about 
us, and somehow through the reason we infer from the imme- 
diately given sense-data, knowledge regarding objects remote in 
space and time. So that the reason mitigates the ' impulses,' in 
some sense, by foresight of remote consequences, desirable and 
undesirable. This much and more we find in Aristotle's theory of 
motives. 

Almost as ancient as the concepts of pleasure or desire and the 
reason are those of instincts and habits. Both of these names 
refer to definite courses of action which tend spontaneously, 
mechanically, to be performed whenever the agent is in a given 
external situation. The difference between them is that an in- 
stinct is supposed to be hereditary while a habit is acquired 
through individual experience. Here are two more candidates, 
besides pain, pleasure and emotions, for the role of motive. 

There are also numerous puzzling overlappings among the 
foregoing elements. Instinctive and habitual actions are usually 
in some degree pleasant or painful; hence the theorist, if he is so 
disposed, can assimilate them to pleasure and pain. Instincts can 
be distinguished from habits only with the greatest difficulty^ 



COMMON-SENSE ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES 23 

because of the helplessness of the infant and the unknown possi- 
bilities of the learning process ; so that the theorist may deny the 
existence of any human instincts. Yet there are facts of animal 
life which make the possibility of an inheritable untaught ability 
evident even to crude observation. Consequently, throughout 
the ages our authorities have argued (or assumed) that if the 
ability to suck and cry can be innate, why may we not suppose 
that other abiHties, such as to believe in the external world, to per- 
ceive space and time, to distinguish between right and wrong, are 
also innate and God-given? The hypothesis of instinct is thus an 
exceedingly natural and convenient one. The * passions of the 
soul,' such as avarice or ambition, have always been regarded as 
dominant and universal human motives, sustained by pleasurable 
emotional excitement, so that in the absence of exact knowledge 
they could be regarded as either instincts, pleasures, or emotions. 
The ' will ' was frequently regarded in the older days as another 
element in action if not in motives, because it was considered a 
ghostly power, seated in the heart or skull, which could give 
commands without regard to the agent's desires or past experi- 
ences. There has always been a strong disposition, on the other 
hand, to consider the will merely as a stable organization of 
motives somewhat equivalent to ' character.' 

Some Issues Depending on Nature of Instincts 

Thus the important factors determining action are the jostling 
impulses — desires or instincts or habits or whatever else they 
may be — and the reason or intellect sitting as arbitrator over 
them. Our task is to learn as much as we can about the nature 
and means of interaction of them aU. We must get the instincts as 
well earmarked and described as possible, for upon their nature 
depends many of the grave questions noticed in the previous 
chapter. Revolutionists have always inclined to believe that the 
* natural man ' is a good-hearted, sociable fellow, that our in- 
stincts naturally lead us to harmonious and happy lives, and that 
society (or rather its rulers the kings, priests and aristocracy) 
have instituted certain conspiracies of law, marriage, and in- 
equality of wealth and luxury, which oppress many of us into 



24 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

rebellion. The more hard-headed (or perhaps hard-hearted) 
observers, such as Aristotle, Hobbes, Malthus, say No; the in- 
stincts of sex, pugnacity, rivalry, and of natural indolence, in a 
state of anarchy would make men's lives supremely miserable by 
incessant quarrels. It is necessary, therefore, to have social 
institutions which balk these inordinate tendencies, by pitting 
against them others which are more powerful when aroused, but 
which in a state of nature are aroused only after the mischief by 
the first instincts has been done. The prudential instincts are 
fear, self-preservation, the love of luxury, and perhaps others. 
They are to be opposed against the rash impulses by means of the 
reason, which foretells the long-run consequences and which can 
be strengthened through education, — that is, made a more and 
more perfect forecaster. Some of the most important questions in 
economic theory, such as private property, competition and 
theories of distribution, as we have seen in Chapter I, are bound 
up with theory concerning these relations of instinct and reason. 
In spite of the best artificial sanctions and education which 
society has been able so far to provide, men have always been 
prone to rash, imprudent, illegal and sinful acts, and so a third 
standpoint has for some time been common. Its view is that, 
although the original instincts are not harmonious, yet they are 
ineradicable and stubborn, and can never be completely subdued 
to moral or prudent levels by mere social threats of painful con- 
sequences. Men are by nature able to be "only a little bit reason- 
able," their idleness or vice is not to be successfully combated by 
distant prospects of poverty or punishment, for they are animals 
with only imperfect control over their impulses. Therefore much 
of society's proceedings on the assumption of complete human 
responsibility has been as ineffective as punishment of the in- 
sane.^ In this view the instincts are not to be held inviolable, but 
are to be circumvented in accordance with a better knowledge of 
their nature just as we circumvent physical obstacles and do not 
merely treat them with contempt. 

"■ Cf. W. E. Hocking, Human Nature and Its Remaking (1918), pp. 5, 6: "It is 
only as a result of much failure in the effort to remake men that the question of pos- 
sibility gains a status and a hearing. It is this same experience which suggests that 
there is such a thing as ' human nature,' offering a more or less constant resistance to 
the remaking process." 



COMMON-SENSE ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES 25 

All of Psychology Involved 

The partial mechanisms of action, then — instinct, habit, pas- 
sion, the reason — are what we must examine. But let it be 
noticed that the whole of psychology is frequently classified 
under the headings Cognition, Feeling (Pleasure-pain and Emo- 
tion) and Conation (or Volition) . All these functions, as we have 
seen, are involved in the motives to action, and therefore the last 
word wUl be said on motives when the last word is written on 
psychology. In the first chapter we intimated that the only dis- 
coveries in psychology which would affect economic theory would 
be those adding importantly to our knowledge of motives, but the 
fact is that hardly any psychological investigation does not have 
some bearing on this problem. The conditions of feeling and 
emotion make up a very large and uncertain subject by them- 
selves, and the cooperation with them of what we caU the intel- 
lect or reason to form the will, make another library. One might 
devote a Hfetime to a scientific study of the conscience, or the 
sense of duty, which is an acknowledged influence on action. The 
laws of association received the labors of a number of the older 
psychologists; but they are now undergoing treatment at the 
hand of a large corps of experimenters in laboratories. The psy- 
chopathic clinics are being resorted to by another large group of 
students for insight into the mechanism of motives. The various 
reaction-time, discrimination and memory experiments, and 
especially the work on attention, all have some bearing on action, 
and a dozen or so psychological journals are steadily setting forth 
detailed results of researches which are raw materials for such 
generalizations as this study aspires to be. The vast complexity of 
the subject, therefore, must extenuate the tentative and ob- 
viously inconclusive character of the present account. 



CHAPTER III 

ASSOCIATIONIST-HEDONISM: ARISTOTLE, HOBBES 

Object of Historical Sketch 

Doubtless there are many who believe, with Professor Patten, 
that McDougall's treatment of motives made "such a radical 
reconstruction that a discussion of the older views becomes a 
waste of time." ^ For our special purposes, however, it seems 
worth while to trace once more, and briefly, the historical de- 
velopment of the associationist-hedonist theory of action. It 
would be entirely possible to plunge immediately into modern 
psychological evidence, which is, in general, of greater value in 
proportion to volume; but since the alleged psychological errors 
of the classical economists occupy a large place in present-day 
economic criticism, we shall feel surer of our ground if we satisfy 
ourselves just how bad that psychology was. As Bentham said in 
his Defence of Usury, it is hardly sufficient to show the logical or 
factual errors of an old established view; we are never satisfied 
until we know why people ever believed so ridiculous a doctrine. 
Conversely, we are better satisfied that old conclusions are correct 
if we are assured that the premises used to arrive at them were 
correct. 

Fortunately for the purpose, we have explicit psychological 
writings by Adam Smith, Bentham and the two Mills, and we 
know that the chief economists of the eighteenth and nineteenth 
century were thoroughly familiar with the classical philosophers 
and moralists who preceded them. A review, therefore, of these 
important sources will enable us to understand the instructed 
thought of their time on human motives. As has been pointed 
out, moreover, the easy comprehensibility of the associationist- 
hedonist doctrine makes it a simplified introduction to the more 

1 "The Mechanism of Mind," Annals Amer. Acad. Pol. and Soc. Sci., 71: 202- 
215 (1917)- 

26 



ASSOCIATIONIST-EEDONISM 27 

refined psychological analysis of the present day, even supposing 
the former to be wholly false. So far as we yet know, however, it is 
not wholly false, for many of the questions considered by the 
older psychologists are among the most unsettled in the science of 
today; and the answers which they arrived at are still worth con- 
sidering. Especially are their catalogues of the characteristic 
leading himian motives valuable to us, in our quest of the specific 
human instincts which are of social significance. Every classical 
psychologist and moralist considered it part of his business to 
give a catalogue of the chief human ' passions,' and since modern 
psychology cannot yet assert confidently what the really heredi- 
tary interests of men are, the older estimates are still to be 
accounted evidence. 

Aristotle 

The first considerable body of doctrines on our subject is in the 
writings of Aristotle. A very complete and explicit theory, in 
fact, can be gathered from this source. "The Philosopher," as he 
was called throughout the Middle Ages, taught that desires for 
pleasure and for the avoidance of pain constitute the motive 
forces in all animals, including men; and that in men alone the 
reason mediates among those impulses which urge toward imme- 
diate satisfaction and those having future reference, so as to secure 
a prudent course giving future pleasures and pains their just due. 
A wise and long-run poHcy of moderation is thus possible if the 
man's reason is strong enough. Pleasures of philosophic contem- 
plation should be chiefly relied on for the best long-term results. 
He treated of the relation of ideas to sensations very much in the 
manner of the modern associationists, and he stated the laws 
governing association much as they have been stated ever since. 
He did not erect the principle of association into a complete ac- 
count of knowledge and the will, however, as did the utilitarian 
psychologists. Reason seemed to him an independent function or 
faculty of the soul, which discerns relations among things and 
argues by syllogisms. To an explicit theory of the sensational 
origin of all knowledge and desire, with association as the prin- 
ciple of their organization, he seems not to have arrived, although 
he came very near it. 



28 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

In more detail, Aristotle's account of an idea or image, in rela- 
tion to a sensation, was this: 

For an active stimulus stamps on the soul a sort of imprint of the sensa- 
tion, analogous to stamping with a seal ring.^ 

The principles by which ideas cohere, or are associated, he men- 
tions several times, most clearly in describing the process of 
remembering: 

When, therefore, we recoUect, we awaken certain antecedent processes, 
and continue this until we caU up that particular experience, after which the 
desired one is wont to appear. That is why we hunt through a series in 
thought, beginning with an object presently before us, or with something 
else, or with an object that is similar, or opposite, or contiguous. In this way, 
recollection is awakened. . . . For mental movements follow one another, 
this one after that, by habituation ... for just as things are mutually re- 
lated in their order of succession, so also are the mental processes.^ 

Here are the expressions ' similarity ' and ' contiguity ' which Bain, 
one of the last and most influential of the associationists, con- 
sidered the fundamental principles of association of ideas. Aris- 
totle's account is one of the great-ancestors of the naturalist 
formulation of knowledge and conduct. 

In his treatise, On the Soul, he gives a pretty definite theory of 
the relations of pleasure, desire, and reason to all human action, 
and this treatment is supplemented by hints in his other works, 
especially the Ethics and the Rhetoric.^ *'It is always the object 
of desire," says Aristotle, "that excites action and this is either 
the good or the apparent good. . . . Evidently the psychical 
power which excites to action has the nature of desire as we call 
it."^ 

^ On Memory and Recollection, 45oaio (W. A. Hammond's translation, entitled 
Aristotle's Psychology, p. 199). 

2 Ibid., 45ib7, 8; 452311; pp. 205, 206 of translation. 

' Professor Hammond, in the translation above mentioned, gives an analysis of 
Aristotle's psychology, based not only on his own translation of De Anima and 
Parva Naturalia, but also upon the other works, especially the two versions of the 
Ethics and some other smaller treatises. Unaccountably his analysis of the moral 
will contains no references to the Rhetoric. It is evidently constructed carefully and 
without prejudice in the light of modem psychological theory, however, so that we 
have relied upon a verification of it by the accompanying translation and by trans- 
lations of the Rhetoric, Politics and parts of the Ethics. 

* De Anima 433a5. 6; p. 133. 



ASSOCIATIONIST-EEDONISM 29 

He then identified this "power" as the " desiderative element 
of the soul" as distinguished from the "nutritive, sensitive, ra- 
tional and deliberative" elements (the latter two, no doubt, 
referring to theoretical and practical reason) . 

Desire is specifically connected with imagination, and he is 
mindful that the latter is largely concocted of ideas or imprints 
of sensations : 

In a word, then, as we said before, an animal in so far as it is capable of 
desire is capable of self -movement. Desire, however, is not found apart from 
imagination, and all imagination is either rational or sensitive in origin, and 
the lower animals share in it.^ 

Now what are the things desired? Well, as we have quoted him 
already, "either the good or the apparent good." In a number of 
places he identifies the good, as seen in desire, with the pleasant. 

The acts done through desire, are such as seem pleasant . . . thus to put 
it shortly, all things which men do of themselves are good or apparently 
good; pleasant or apparently pleasant; for I reckon among goods, riddance 
from evils or apparent evUs, and the exchange of a greater evil for a less.^ 

Again, in discussing the question of movement in the lower 
animals, he says: 

Is it possible for them to have imagination or desire? They appear to feel 
pleasure and pain, and if these are felt they must necessarily have desire 
also.3 

Now as to the role of reason in action, he speaks sometimes of 
the theoretical reason and again of the practical reason, meaning 
that the soul functions sometimes in discriminating the true from 
the false, and sometimes in distinguishing the good from the bad. 
The ' faculty psychology ' — teaching that the various mental 
powers such as reason and memory are seated in different parts of 
the body or brain — arose with Plato, but its essence was re- 
jected by Aristotle. The soul to him was a unity residing in the 
heart; and its function could be classified into ' powers ' or ' facul- 
ties ' only from the point of view of the onlooker. The practical 

^ De Anima 433bio; p. 134, 

^ Rhetoric, Book I, ch. x (Jebb's translation). 

2 De Anima 43ai; p. 136. Also, "the fact that all animals, brute and human 
alike, pursue pleasure, is some presumption of its being in a sense the chief Good." — 
Nic. Eth., iiS3b, Book VII, ch. xiii. 



30 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

reason expresses itself in the form of a syllogism with an impera- 
tive conclusion. The major premise, for instance, is "A man 
should take exercise." Since I am a man, it follows that I should 
take exercise. 

So that it is reasonable to regard these two principles, viz., desire and 
practical reason, he says, as motor forces. . . . However, reason does not 
appear to produce movement independently of desire. . . . Reason, then, is 
in every case right, but desire and imagination may be right or wrong.i 

We recognize here the heart of relativist ethics, — the non- 
moral character of single impulses, considered by themselves. 

He is sometimes compelled to speak of the practical reason as a 
kind of appetite or desire, since obviously in some sense it strug- 
gles with desires, just as desires struggle with one another: 

Although desires arise which are opposed to each other, as is the case when 
reason and appetite are opposed, it happens only in creatures endowed with 
a sense of time. (For reason, on account of the future, bids us resist, while 
desire regards the present; the momentarily pleasant appears to it as the 
absolutely pleasant and the absolutely good, because it does not see the 
future.) 2 

The practical reason, it thus appears, is a due regard for future 
pleasure, — in other words it is prudence. And prudence is, in 
fact, Aristotle's great virtue. He rejects the Socratic doctrine 
that virtue is knowledge, since the sphere of the moral life he con- 
siders to be among pleasures and pains rather than in knowledge, 
though he claims that "one cannot be, strictly speaking, good 
without Practical Wisdom, nor Practically- Wise without moral 
goodness," ^ seeing that the widest knowledge is necessary to the 
greatest prudence. From the series of voluntary decisions, a ha- 
bitual kind of conduct is generated, which is the moral character. 
There is a brief outline of Aristotle's psychology of action or of 
motives. The remaining point of interest to us is his treatment of 
the leading interests of human nature. He discusses these most 
expHcitly in the Rhetoric, for the immediate purpose — rather 
common then among rhetoricians — of teaching orators how best 
to persuade or appeal to the emotions of their audiences. Some of 

1 De Anima 433a; p. 133. Cf. Nic. Eth., 1139. 

2 Ibid.,4S3h7;p. i33- 

^ Nic. Eth. 1144b, Book VI, ch. xiii. Cf. Rhetoric Book I, ch. vi, list of goods. 



ASSOCIA TIONIST-EEDONISM 3 1 

his advice is worth our while yet. You must pay attention not 
only to the logic of your arguments, he tells his students, but also 
to the passions of your hearers. 

For we give our judgments in different ways under the influence of pain 
and of joy, of liking and of hatred. The man who desires and is hopeful. . . 
thinks that it will be, and that it will be good; the man who is indifferent, or 
who feels a difficulty thinks the opposite.^ 

Here is the alliance between the wish and the thought, in pseudo- 
logical reasoning, which is furnishing so much occupation to the 
Freudian psychologists.^ In analyzing pleasure he sometimes 
appeals to the evidence of the will itself, thus falling into the cir- 
cular reasoning pointed out in Chapter II, "Everything, too, is 
pleasant of which the desire exists in one ; for desire is appetite of 
the pleasant." In general, it is pleasant to conform with nature; 
hence to follow a habit, even if it was painful in the learning, is 
pleasant, "for an acquired habit comes to be as a natural in- 
stinct, ... for ' often ' and * always ' are neighbors, and nature 
is concerned with the invariable, as habit with the frequent." He 
also conjirms the poet's saying that "every compulsory thing is 
grievous." On this account "acts of attention, earnest or intense 
efforts, must be painful, for they involve compulsion, and force, 
unless one is accustomed to them." This may be a dictum that 
labor is generally irksome, though among the pleasures enu- 
merated is the Une of Euripides, "To spend one's time in the 
occupation in which one seems to be at one's best." He char- 
acterizes pleasures as irrational and rational; the former referring 
to the sensations of the body, and the latter to desires formed on 

^ Rhetoric, Book I, ch. xi, par. 5; Book XI, ch. i, par. 4 (Jebb). 

2 Aristotle discusses, in Book VII of the Nicomachean Ethics, the paradox of a 
man acting in opposition to his own judgment or knowledge, explaining that the 
"knowing better" is dormant at the time of action and does not arise in conscious- 
ness. Sidgwick took up the problem in an article "Unreasonable Action," Mind, 
N. S. II, pp. 174-188 (1893) and called attention to the sophistical reasonings by 
which men justify their momentary desires. McDougall cites this latter article, 
rather "unreasonably," it seems to us, as evidence that Sidgwick thought "rea- 
sonable" action to be the normal and typical action of all men (Social Psychology, 
p. 9). Apparently we are not to suppose that men usually look before they leap with- 
out supposing that always they know exactly where they will land, according to the 
anti-intellectual critics. 



32 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

conviction, through imagination, memory and hope. Other 
pleasures mentioned are love and even mourning, revenge, strife, 
honor, novelty, learning, imitation of good works, flattery ("since 
everyone is selfish") and ruling. The pains are the "opposites" 
of these. ^ 

Perhaps more fundamental for the theory of motives is his 
catalogue of the * Affections,' — a term much used by the classical 
psychologists, and nearly synonymous with the other favorite 
term * Passions.' These names comprehend the dominating and 
fairly universal motives to action, which, it was always recog- 
nized, are often carried to excess. Aristotle refers to the affec- 
tions as "those things, being attended by pleasure or pain, by 
which men are altered in regard to their judgments," this quality 
constituting their importance for the Rhetorician. He discusses 
them in pairs of opposites, with the characteristics and causes, 
under the following heads: anger and mildness; friendship and 
enmity or hatred; fear and boldness; shame and shamelessness; 
favor or gratitude, and ingratitude; pity and indignation; 
emulation and envy.^ 

There are numerous overlappings in these affections and other 
causes of pleasures, as is likewise the case in most modern ac- 
counts of instincts and other interests. Anger, he says, is mainly 
due to slighting or disdain, either of the subject or of something 
dear to him. Enmity is distinguished from anger chiefly by the 
length of time it lasts. Shame is pain or trouble from prospect of 
ignominy. Emulation is a commendable desire for goods for 
one's self; Envy is pain that another has something good. We 
shall bear this list of affections in mind as we examine the sug- 
gested list of leading human motives put forward by other writers 
down to the present. 

It will be noticed that he has not given avarice or the desire for 
wealth as one of the affections, although he, in common with 
most other moralists of history, considered the pecuniary interest 
among the most general and powerful motives in human life.^ 

' All these quotations are from the Rhetoric, Book I, chs. x and xi (Jebb). 

2 Ibid., Book II, chs. ii-xi. 

3 E. g., Politics i267bi9 (Book II, ch. vii): "The avarice of mankind is insati- 
able." 



ASSOCIATIONIST-HEDONISM 33 

But he was aware that wealth is an ' instrument ' rather than a 
primary good/ though he did not always keep the distinction 
clearly in mind. In describing the affections, he presupposes the 
desirability of wealth, friends, power and honor. The discussions 
illustrate the great difficulty of discerning introspectively the 
original wants or motives, and the principles of their elaboration, 
especially if one realizes that in many cases the thing which was 
originally desired as a means comes to be sought as an end in 
itself. 

Probably the space we have devoted to Aristotle is out of pro- 
portion to his importance for our present topic, either by way of 
excess or deficit. His doctrine on motives, that is to say, passed 
to his successors scattered through many pages of ambiguous and 
disconnected sentences, — the imperfections of exposition being 
due more to the conditions of transmission, doubtless, than to 
confusion in his thought. We have simply attempted to condense 
and make coherent what he had to say on the motives of mankind 
and our version, based chiefly on the translations of a few of his 
works, agrees essentially with the version of the translator who 
made a careful study and analysis of the whole of Aristotle's psy- 
chology. Yet we must recognize that the jumbled condition of his 
writings must have prevented the greater part of his readers from 
getting any definite, unequivocal doctrine from Aristotle, and it 
has enabled the most diverse schools of thought to trace their 
pedigrees to him. In particular, the self-reahzation schools of 
ethics, of which T. H. Green is the most conspicuous exponent, 
find the source of their anti-hedonist theories of action in the 
great philosopher. They doubtless find plenty of passages which 
support them, especially those of metaphysical tenor.^ There is 

^ Rhetoric Book I, ch. xi: (In the list of goods, along with happiness, health, 
beauty, etc.) "Wealth, again: — for it is the excellence of possession, and a thing 
productive of many others." Cf. Nic. Eth., Book VTI. 

2 Hammond, in his introduction, after developing Aristotle's view of the relation 
of desire and reason in forming the human will, says (p. Ixxi) : "In the foregoing I 
have had regard to the moral will. In a general sense, however — perhaps akin 
to Schopenhauer's conception — Aristotle employs the term energeia (all organic 
effort) as will. This form of will or activity is, in his teleological view of the world, 
impulse to the good or a striving towards self-realization, whether in plant or 
animal." 



34 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

no occasion here for controversy, even if we were competent to 
enter upon one. Our purpose has been accomplished in showing 
that the seeds of a naturalist, sensationalist, hedonist account of 
the springs of action are to be found in the writings of the man 
whose authority up to the beginning of the nineteenth century 
was almost beyond comparison in the educated world. Opposing 
currents of philosophy and science caused the naturalist psy- 
chology to be ignored for ages, but the scattered sentences were 
read by every cultured person from Aristotle's time — not to 
ours, but to the age of the classical economists — and the schol- 
ars in philosophy, ethics, politics and the early social sciences 
throughout those centuries had all this material in the back of 
their heads. As we shall see, they added little to it except system 
and the verification of their own observations. 

Grotius 

From Aristotle to Hobbes there were no advances, from the 
modern point of view, in psychology; but we may linger a mo- 
ment over the work of a seventeenth century optimist (on the 
questions of human nature), whose work achieved a commanding 
prestige throughout the world, — Hugo Grotius. His Law (or 
Rights) of War and Peace was published in 1625, more than a 
century after Machiavelli wrote The Prince. Grotius supported 
his theories of international law by a doctrine of the existence of 
social or benevolent instincts in human nature, in addition to the 
commonly accepted self -regarding impulses. Here we find the 
modern scientific spirit again invading the fields of ethical and 
political inquiry. It looks, not particularly to divine revelation, 
nor to the speculations of philosophers as to the effective power of 
the Good, but into the natural world, where God's purposes are 
thought to be revealed by his works, — by the orderly and un- 
capricious round of phenomena. We shall presently find a similar 
spirit in Adam Smith's ethical system, which represented a large 
and growing intellectual movement in the eighteenth century. 

Grotius takes issue at once with the philosophers and poets 
before him who have maintained that: 



ASSOCIATIONIST-HEDOmSM 35 

Nature prompts all Men, and in general All Animals, to seek their own 
particular Advantage; so that either there is no Justice at all, or if there is 
any, it is extreme Folly, because it engages us to procure the Good of others 
to our own Prejudice.^ 

No, says Grotius; man is indeed an animal, but one with some 
special traits. 

Now amongst the Things peculiar to Man is his Desire of Society, that is a 
certain Inclination to live with those of his own kind, not in any Manner 
whatever but peacably and in a Community regulated according to the best 
of his understanding. . . . 

For even of the other Animals there are some that forget a little the Care 
of their own Interests in Favor either of their young ones or those of their 
own kind. Which in my Opinion proceeds from some Extrinsick intelligent 
Principle because they do not show the same Disposition in other Matters 
that are not more difficult than these. The same may be said of Infants in 
whom is to be seen a propensity to do Good to others before they are capable 
of instruction.^ 

This instinctive sociability, he says, is one real foundation of 
right conduct, and of our respect for the property and privileges of 
others; but he does not despise the cementing force of 'utility' in 
the narrow egoistic and hedonistic sense. 

By reason that Man above aU other Creatures is endued not only with this 
social Faculty of which we have spoken but likewise with Judgment to dis- 
cern things pleasant and hurtful and those not only present but future and 
such as may prove to be so in their Consequences; it must therefore be agree- 
able to human Nature that according to the Nature of our Understanding we 
shoidd in these Things follow the dictates of a right and sound Judgment and 
not be curbed either by Fear or the Allurements of present Pleasure nor be 
carried away violently by blind Passion.^ 

Prudence, therefore, he believes is a part of natural right that is 
one of the laws of our nature. Yet those who see in social ar- 
rangements nothing but convenience in pursuing selfish ends are 
mistaken. The old saw, " Interest, that Spring of Just and Right," 
is not literally true. It simply happens that utility conspires with 
sociability to make society more secure. 

The Mother of Natural Law is human Nature itself which although even 
the necessity of our subsistence should not require it would of itself create 
in us a mutual Desire of Society . , . but to the Law of Nature Profit is 

^ Rights of War and Peace, preliminary discourse, Sec. 5. 
2 Ibid., Sees. 6 and 7. ^ Ibid., Sec. 9. 



36 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

annexed: for the Author of Nature was pleased that every man in particular 
should be weak of himself and not want of many Things necessary for living 
commodiously to the End that we might more easUy efifect Society. . . .^ 

In this book, then, the theory of social and kindly ' propen- 
sities ' or instincts, having no reference to a quid pro quo, a theory 
backed up by observations of mutual aid among the lower ani- 
mals, is explicitly applied to social science, and the doctrine of the 
providential reenforcement of the social instincts by harmony 
among selfish interests is hinted at. As was intimated in Chap- 
ter II, Grotius' views are perfectly compatable with psychological 
hedonism, for a man's pleasure might well be in unselfish acts. 
The position he is attacking is that man is naturally completely 
egoistic, not that he naturally seeks pleasure. The natural tend- 
encies along both these lines must be thoroughly explored before 
a complete theory of motives is to be obtained. 

HOBBES 

Hobbes' Leviathan was first published in 1651, twenty-six 
years after the great work of Grotius. In this political treatise we 
find a pessimistic theory of human nature — that is to say a 
doctrine of natural egoism — backed up by a clean-cut psy- 
chological analysis along hedonist and associationist lines. It was 
probably the first improvement, as a modern student looks at it, 
upon Aristotle's psychology; the improvement consisting in a 
more clear and unequivocal exposition, and in the advances to- 
ward a formulation of mental processes upon mechanical or phys- 
iological principles. The book bears the impress of three great 
influences in Hobbes' life, — his classical learning, his acquaint- 
ance with the work of the great early modern scientists (William 
Harvey and the astronomers of the period) , and the bloody Eng- 
lish civil wars which tossed him as a refugee back and forth across 
the Channel.^ 

1 Rights of War and Peace, preliminary discourse, Sec. 17. 

2 The tribulations of the Royalist Party with which he was affiliated undoubtedly 
added to the sharpness of his sense of society's precariousness in the face of human 
selfishness and pugnacity; though his psychology had been substantially formed 
previous to the civil wars and was pubUshed in a treatise on Human Nature around 
1630. 



ASSOCIATIONIST-HEDONISM 37 

He begins with a chapter on " Sense," — or sensation, as we call 
it. "For," he explains "there is no conception in a man's mind, 
which hath not at first, totally, or by parts, been begotten upon 
the organs of Sense," ^ — which still is a disputed point. The 
cause of sense, briefly, is that an external object presses upon the 
organ of sense and communicates a motion to the nerves, which 
thereupon carry the motion to the brain and the heart, causing 
there a "resistance or counter-pressure, or endeavor of the 
heart to deliver itself." 

In the next chapter he treats of imagination or " Fancy," which 
is simply "decaying sense," that is, slight "motions within us 
reliques of those made in the sense " (Chs. II and III) . Memory is 
based on the same sHght vibration. Next he treats of the "train 
of imagination," and states that all association of ideas is based on 
the one law of succession or contiguity. "When a man thinketh 
on any thing whatsoever," says Hobbes, "His next Thought after, 
is not altogether so casual as it seems to be." They always pro- 
ceed in the order in which the sensations were given (Ch. Ill) . He 
distinguishes, however, between those associations which occur in 
idle revery, and those in trains of thought dominated by some 
strong desire. In the latter case the associations are directed 
backward to a chain of causes toward means of satisfying the 
desire. Here he touches on a problem that is still a puzzler for 
psychology, — the "selective agency" of purpose, in the process 
of directive thought or other purposive effort. 

Now turn to his chapter on the "Passions," where his explana- 
tion of the will or voluntary movement is given (Ch. VI) . Some of 
the vital motions, as of the blood and breathing, require no imag- 
ination, he says ; but volimtary movements do presuppose imag- 
ination. There must be a precedent thought of "whither, which 
way, and what." 

The small beginnings of motion, within the body of man are appetites or 
aversions. Some of them are born with man; as appetite for Food ... of 
Excretion and exoneration . . . and some other Appetites, not many. The 
rest, which are Appetites of particular things, proceed from experience, and 
trial of their eflfects upon themselves, or other men. For of things we know 
not at all, . . . we can have no further Desire, than to taste and try it. 

^ Leviathan, Ch. i. 



38 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

Now any particular man calls the object of his appetite or 
desire good, and the object of his aversion had. The terms good 
and bad have no other than personal meaning, except where there 
are laws of a Sovereign. The "motion" of appetite is pleasure, of 
sense or of mind; "pleasures of the mind" come from foresight of 
pleasant consequences to the senses. 

Now as to the control of the reason over the passion. Hobbes' 
chapter on the reason does not help us much in this connection, 
as he is trying to show that the use of syllogisms is nothing but 
addition and subtraction, and by the same token liable to error, 
which point is made manifest, he thinks, by the reasonings of his 
opponents. The process depends on the use of speech and on 
naming. He speaks elsewhere, however, of the mental process of 
following forward a chain of consequences from a given event, 
according to knowledge already gained by experience. Concern- 
ing Prudence, he says it is identical with foresight, providence, or 
wisdom, and that it consists in conjecturing the future from ex- 
perience of like chains of causes in the past — 

Though such conjecture, through the difficulty of observing all circum- 
stances, be very fallacious. But this is certain; by how much one man has 
more experience of things past, than another; by so much also he is more 
Prudent, and his expectations seldomer fail him (Ch. III). 

Prudence in imagining the causes which will possibly satisfy a 
felt desire is common to man and beast. "There be beasts," says 
he, "that at a year old observe more, and pursue that which is for 
their good, more prudently, than a child can do at ten," — so 
little belief had he in instincts, as untaught abilities to perform 
complex acts. It is therefore the more interesting to find him 
saying that disinterested curiosity, which leads a person to ex- 
amine all possible effects of any given event, apparently without 
reference to his own pleasures and pains, seems to be a purely 
human characteristic. " I have not at any time seen any signe " of 
it except in man, he says; it can be "hardly incident to the nature 
of any living creature that has no other Passion but sensuall, such 
as hunger, thirst, lust, and anger." (Ibid.) His brief description 
of deUberation, if compared with these remarks on prudence, will 
give his general views on the relation of reason to action. Appe- 



ASSOCIATIONIST-HEDONISM 39 

tites and aversions concerning a proposed act will arise in rapid 
alternation in one's mind, according as good or evil consequences 
are discerned. This process of deliberation continues until some 
one appetite finally passes into overt action and becomes the 
will (Ch. VI). 

The last point for us to notice is his estimate of the prevailing 
passions or leading motives in human nature generally. He 
catalogues a long string of passions, each compounded on the 
preceding appetitive entities. For instance, "displeasures, are 
some in the sense, and called Payne; others, in the Expectation of 
consequences, and are called Griefe." 

Griefe, for the successe of a Competitor in wealth, honour, or other good, 
if it be joyned with endeavour to enforce our own abilities to equall or ex- 
cede him, is called Emulation: But joyned with Endeavor to supplant, or 
hinder a Competitor, Envie. (Ibid.) 

The hst of passions contains such diverse names as courage, 
anger, di£S.dence, benevolence, good nature, covetousness, am- 
bition, Hberahty, miserableness and many others; passive states of 
mind and active desires being confused as in Aristotle's list. 

Although most of his passions are egoistic, we notice some ex- 
ceptions: benevolence, magnanimity, kindness, one species of 
love, and especially curiosity. The latter is "a lust of the mind, 
that by a perseverance of deHght in the continuall and inde- 
fatigable generation of Knowledge, exceedeth the short ve- 
hemence of any carnall Pleasure." 

In his well-known chapter on ''The Natural Condition of Man- 
kind," he asserts again, as he has in his introduction, that men are 
all very much alike as to ability and passions, and alike are they 
all conceited. Mentally they are still more equal than physically; 
and the weakest can by machination kill or rob the strongest. 
" So that in the Nature of Man, we find three principall causes of 
quarrell. First, Competition; secondly. Diffidence; thirdly, 
Glory. The first maketh men invade for gain; the second for 
Safety ; and the third for Reputation ' ' (Ibid. , Ch. XIII) . ' ' Com- 
petition," it seems, is the acquired desire for material goods or 
means of enjoyment of the senses. The state, or organized social 
power — the sovereign — is made possible partly by the passions 



40 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

themselves, and partly by the reason. The passions which incline 
men to peace, in the state of nature, are fear of death and desire of 
enjoyment of wealth; reason shows them they can combine 
mutually to limit one another's liberties. The passions leading to 
crime, he says elsewhere, are especially Hate, Lust, Ambition and 
Covetousness. They are so strong that they can hardly be re- 
strained by reason, and the constant exercise of severe punish- 
ments is required to keep them in check (Ch. XXVII). In a 
comparison of animal and human societies, possibly suggested by 
Grotius or Aristotle, he says that many of the lower creatures get 
on amicably in societies without any sovereign to overawe them, 
because they are lacking in individual conceit, and so their private 
interests are naturally harmonious.^ 

Now Hobbes, to be sure, is out of date, — nearly three hundred 
years. His psychology is of little use to us directly except for his 
observations on the dominant motives of the general run of men, 
which are doubtless to be taken with some reserve. (It is doubt- 
ful if he would greatly change his mind if he could return now and 
learn all that we have to offer him; but facts, apparently, are in- 
terpreted differently by different men, partly by reason of varying 

1 It is true that certain living creatures, as Bees, and Ants, live sociably one with 
another (which are therefore by Aristotle numbered amongst PoUticall creatures); 
and yet have no other direction, than their particular judgments and appetites; nor 
speech, whereby one of them can signifie to another, what he thinks expedient for 
the common benefit: and therefore some man may perhaps desire to know, why 
Man-kind cannot do the same. To which I answer, 

First, that men are continually in competition for Honour and Dignity, which 
these creatures are not; and consequently amongst men there ariseth on that 
ground, Envy and Hatred, and finally Warre; but amongst these not so. 

Secondly, that amongst these creatures, the Common good differeth not from 
the Private; and being by nature incUned to their private, they procure thereby the 
common benefit. But man, whose Joy consisteth in comparing himselfe with other 
men, can reUsh nothing but what is eminent. 

Thirdly, that these creatures, having not (as man) the use of reason, do not see, 
nor think they see any fault, in the administration of their common businesse: 
whereas amongst men, there are very many, that thinke themselves wiser, and abler 
to govern the Publique, better than the rest; and these strive to reforme and in- 
novate, one this way, another that way; and thereby bringeth into Distraction and 
Civill warre. 

Fourthly, that these creatures, . . . want that art of words, by which some men 
can represent to others, that which is Good, in the likenesse of evill; . . . Ch. 
XVII. 



ASSOCIATIONIST-EEDONISM 4I 

innate intellectual mechanisms.) His system was studied as- 
siduously, however, by a line of philosophers including the associa- 
tion psychologists of the early nineteenth century. James Mill 
was thoroughly familiar with Hobbes' work. Utilitarianism owed 
much to the latter in several directions, as the major premise of his 
political argvmients was the paramount good of a maximum ful- 
fillment of human desires. But one of the most significant features 
of his teachings, so far as we are concerned, is that while he re- 
duced all motives ultimately to egoistic pleasures of sense (or pur- 
ported to), he had to recognize some powerful universal passions 
such as curiosity, benevolence, anger and the desire for honor, 
which would certainly have given him considerable difiiculty had 
he tried to distinguish the elementary sensations involved. 

Connections with Epistemological Controversies 

Inquiry into the psychological hedonism of the utilitarians and 
classical economists also takes us dangerously near the epistemo- 
logical and ethical controversies centering around the works 
of Descartes, Locke, Hume and Kant, — to go no further. We 
must avoid this labyrinth, but it cannot escape our notice that the 
' innate ideas,' * intuition,' and ' categorical imperatives ' — all 
psychological hypotheses formulated in the service of moraHty 
and the beHef in the external world — are of the same lineal stock 
as our modern theories of instinct. The teachings of Locke, 
Berkeley and Hume, directed against the innate idea doctrine, 
culminated, it will be remembered, in Hume's assertion that all 
our knowledge and belief is derived from our sensations according 
to their psychological, not logical, associations. Psychological 
associations is a matter of temporal contiguity, which, as Locke 
has shown, may be a very hit or miss order and not related to 
eternal or physical necessity at all. There was no assurance of 
a real world back of our sensations, our variable beliefs are 
simply generated by individual experiences and associations of 
sensations. There is, accordingly, no rational and external basis of 
morals, but only the pleasant feeling which men in general ex- 
perience at the sight of virtuous acts.^ 

1 David Hume, Treaties of Human Nature, Bk. HI, pt. i, sec. 2 (1740). 



42 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

This scepticism stirred Kant on the Continent and Reid in Scot- 
land to substantiate the real world and the eternal character of 
morality by the hypothesis of ' intuitions,' or inborn knowledge 
or behefs which supplement the impressions we derive from our 
senses. These intuitions, they taught, give us authoritative evi- 
dence of the existence of real objects, of God, of right and wrong, 
etc. They differ from instincts in the modern sense as knowledge 
of real things differs from mere feeling or from the capacity for 
action of a certain kind, in a species of animals. Hume had 
noticed the domestic instincts in treating of the ' passions,' but he 
considered that they proved nothing about real existence. Now 
both Hume and Dugald Stewart, the follower of Reid, were close 
friends of Adam Smith, and James Mill acknowledged both as his 
masters in certain respects. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADAM SMITH 

Hints in Wealth of Nations 

With the foregoing attempts at orientation, we take up the psy- 
chology of Adam Smith, as it concerns hmnan motives. There are 
various hints of it in the Wealth of Nations, but it is to be found in 
fuller and more explicit form in his earlier ethical treatise, the 
Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). In the Wealth of Nations, as 
is well known, he assumes the general prevalence of economic 
' self-interest,' or, as we might express it, ' pecuniary egoism,' — a 
general inclination in all men to drive as good a business bargain 
for themselves as possible. The suggestion has been made that he 
was unduly influenced by the peculiar traits of his own people, 
that he assumed "there was a Scotchman inside every man." 
Certainly he considered the spirit of accumulation to be a 
strongly-marked human character, and doubtless he took for 
granted some ' rationality ' in the pursuit of it. The desire of 
nearly every man for wealth is boundless, he intimated, for 
though the stomach is soon filled, the "passion for ostentation" 
seems to be without limit. ^ He recognizes non-utilitarian forces in 
industry, however, such as the instinct or "propensity" to truck 
and barter ^ and there are expressions hinting that saving is a 
quasi-automatic process, most people preferring future and more 
abundant enjo)niients to present scanty pleasures.^ He repeats 

^ Wealth of Nations, Bk. I, ch. ii, pt. 2 (Vol. I, p. 165 of Cannan's edition). 

2 Ibid., Bk. I, ch. ii. The substance of this passage is also in his original Lectures, 
p. 169 (cited by Veblen, Quar. Jour. Econ., Vol. XIII, p. 399). 

^ With regard to profusion, the principle which prompts to expense is the passion 
for present enjoyment; which, though sometimes violent and very difficult to be re- 
strained, is in general only momentary and occasional. But the principle which 
prompts to save is the desire of bettering our condition, a desire which, though 
generally calm and dispassionate, comes with us from the womb and never leaves us 
until we go into the grave. In the whole interval which separates those two mo- 
ments, there is scarce perhaps a single instant in which any man is so perfectly and 

43 



44 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

his emphasis on the urgency of the saving impulses by saying that 
they bring constantly increasing national opulence, in spite of the 
worst governmental extravagance. "Like the unknown principle 
of animal life, it frequently restores health and vigor to the con- 
stitution, in spite, not only of the disease, but of the absurd pre- 
scriptions of the doctor." ^ 

Theory of Moral Sentiments 

Now let us see how these psychological views of "propensities" 
and "self-interest" are fitted together in his Moral Sentiments, 
into an ethical system. Then we can consider the parts which 
have special economic significance. 

It becomes clear in the first two chapters that Adam Smith be- 
lieves in non-egoistic instincts, for he vigorously combats the idea 
that the "principle" of sympathy is a "refinement of self-love." 
The pleasures of sympathy are so instantaneous, and are shown 
on such frivolous occasions, that it is absurd to account for the 
phenomena by assuming manifold calculations of self-interest. 
He cites the pleasure of getting a laugh from the company at one's 
joke, and of reading to a friend a poem which one has found espe- 
cially enjoyable.^ Consequently, however selfish a man may be, 
he is not without disinterested sympathy, or capacity to feel some 
stirrings of the same emotions which he perceives another person 
to be experiencing. There is, in this treatise, little explicit theory 
as to sensation, ideas and associations; doubtless he considered 
that his friend Hume had sufficiently attended to them, and he 
was interested only in tracing the interweavings of the original 
traits or passions of human nature in the production of the ' moral 
sense.' He did not consider moral judgments to be intuitive and 

completely satisfied with his situation as to be without any wish of alteration or im- 
provement of any kind. An augmentation of fortune is the means by which the 
greater part of man propose and wish to better their condition. — Ibid., Bk. II, 
ch. iii (Vol. I, p. 323, Cannan's ed.). 

^ Wealth of Nations (Cannan's ed.), Vol. I, p. 325. In the Moral Sentiments, 
however, he asserts that a pleasure which is to come ten years hence attracts us 
very little in comparison with one of today; and the need of acquiring prudence 
and self-command over the natural immediate passions runs all through this earlier 
work (see Pt. IV, ch. ii, p. 329 of the edition of 181 2). 
* Theory of Moral Sentiments, Pt. I, sec. i, ch. ii. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADAM SMITH 45 

unanalyzable but to be the resultant of various instinctive pro- 
clivities such as sympathy, resentment and gratitude. 

The principle or instinct of sympathy, according to Smith, does 
not prompt the agent to any special course of action upon the 
presentation of a certain external situation (as is the case with the 
food-getting instincts, for instance), but it causes every human 
being, when he is in the presence of another person who is ex- 
periencing an emotional reaction to some particular object, to 
feel a lesser degree of that same emotion. The judgment of the 
impartial spectator as to what expression of the other's passion is 
fitting to the occasion, is the natural judgment of the "propriety" 
of any action. He thinks we are all somewhat egoistic and prone 
to overestimate our fortunes and misfortunes, so that the by- 
stander who apprehends our situation S3anpathetically, but yet 
does not experience the full degree of our passions, is able to give 
a more accurate account of the merits of the case than ourselves. 

In another preliminary section he discusses the passions under 
the following heads : those originating in the body, those originat- 
ing "from a particular turn or habit of the imagination," unsocial, 
social, and selfish passions.^ The bodily passions are obvious; the 
"peculiar turn of the imagination" is an individual attachment 
such as the love of a particular person. The unsocial passions are 
hatred and resentment; these are, however, "necessary parts of 
the character of human nature," and are S3nTipathized with in 
appropriate circumstances. The social passions are generosity, 
humanity, kindness, mutual friendship and esteem; these are 
always pleasing to the spectator for he can sympathize both with 
the subject and with the object of them. Probably he meant to in- 
clude gratitude in this latter category, as he later assigns it an 
important place in the moral sentiments. The selfish passions are 
in between the social and unsocial. These are "grief and joy on 
account of our own private good and bad fortune," — that is, the 
pain which comes from frustration of our passions, or the pleasure 
of their fulfillment. It would appear that he considered most of 
these passions innate endowments of human nature, though we 
cannot be quite sure as to what his list of such indivisible traits 
* Theory of Moral Sentiments, Ft. I, sec. 2, chs. i-v. 



4-6 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

would have been. A particular attachment could hardly be such 
a trait, and to say that it is common to all men to form particular 
attachments does not enlighten us much unless common features 
of these attachments can be discerned. 

Propriety, then, is the degree of any passion or emotion which a 
bystander knowing the circumstances entirely S3anpathizes with. 
It is the affection which is properly proportioned to its provoca- 
tion. Now comes a discussion of merit and demerit, which is con- 
cerned with the action taken by the person feeling the original 
passion on account of its excitement, and is concerned further 
with the consequences of that action (Pt. III). Adam Smith 
further believes that the motives to an action, including the in- 
tention of the agent, are the only things to be considered in form- 
ing a moral judgment on the whole act. Practically, he admits, 
the consequences have also to be considered, on account of our 
prejudices, and these prejudices are even providentially arranged, 
since moral judgments which take account of consequences teach 
people to be careful. The judgment of merit and demerit is based 
upon the S5mipathy of the impartial and informed bystander, with 
the passions both of the agent and of the person toward whom his 
reaction is directed. The judgment of merit or benevolence is 
sympathetic participation in the gratitude of the person toward 
whom the agent does a good turn; the judgment of demerit is 
sympathy with the instinctive resentment of a person who is in- 
jured. These two instincts make social life possible among primi- 
tive men, for resentment places an automatic check upon injuries, 
and the sympathetic appraisal of such resentment by people not 
directly affected moderates resentment into real justice. Merit 
and demerit imply rewards and punishments, which are approved 
and perhaps conferred by the onlookers collectively; whereas the 
propriety of behavior as exhibiting feeling is reflected only by the 
private attitude of approval or disapproval of members of the 
social group. 

The individual's sense of private duty, that is his moral sense or 
conscience is next discussed, and is found to proceed from the 
human capacity for impartial sympathy with the acts and feelings 
of other people. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADAM SMITH 47 

We either approve or disapprove of our conduct, according as we feel that, 
when we place ourselves in the situation of another man and view it, as it 
were, from his station, we either can or cannot entirely enter into and sym- 
pathize with the sentiments and motives which influenced it.^ 

No such sense of duty would exist in an individual who should 
live his whole life in complete solitude, any more than a sense of 
himian beauty would be possible. (The esthetic and moral na- 
tures are very closely connected, according to Smith.) 

But bring him into society, and all his own passions will immediately be- 
come the causes of new passions. He will observe that mankind approve of 
some of them, and are disgusted by others. He will be elevated in the one 
case and cast down in the other. . . . {Ibid.) 

Hence, experience with the way our own sympathies deal with 
the feeHngs and acts of other people, and our observations as to 
how our own conduct is reflected in the attitudes of our neighbors, 
build up the "man within the breast," or conscience, who sees our- 
selves very much as others see us; who takes an objective view of 
the situation leading to action and thus is able to dominate our 
passions from consideration of ulterior effects. In some passages 
marked by his characteristic noble eloquence, he describes the 
struggles of conscience with "self-love," when one's private good 
is opposed to the greater good of others. Conscience is supreme 
"in the generous upon all occasions, in the mean upon many," he 
says; and 

. . . the man within calls to us, with a voice capable of astonishing the 
most presumptuous of our passions, that we are but one of the multitude, in 
no respect better than any other in it; and that when we prefer ourselves so 
shamefully and blindly to others, we become the proper objects of resent- 
ment, abhorrence, and execration.^ 

He sometimes speaks of the "man within," or conscience, as 
synonymous with the reason. 

More Especially Economic Psychology 

So much for the outlines of Smith's moral system. We can now 
collect some scattered but economically significant psychological 
doctrines from the work without great danger of misrepresenting 
his larger meanings. 

^ Theory of Moral Sentiments, Pt. Ill, ch. i, p. 189. 
2 Ibid., Pt. Ill, ch. iii, p. 230. 



48 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

In the first place, we cannot but notice the frequency with 
which he argues against the contention that morality is based 
upon human perceptions of utility. He has devoted three whole 
chapters to such refutations, besides numerous smaller passages 
throughout the book. We have seen that he denied this explana- 
tion of the facts of sympathy. Morality is indeed useful for the 
preservation of society, he admits, and our personal welfare is of 
course bound up with the survival of the whole group; but men 
practically never reflect upon this fact of social utility or solidar- 
ity when they spontaneously condemn immoral practices (Pt. II, 
sec. 2, ch. iii). It simply happens that the direct and often selfish 
human impulses were arranged by that Great Watch-maker, 
Nature, so that the general effect of the actions they lead to is the 
preservation of society. Of the many allusions to the beneficent 
Order of Nature the following may be found typical : 

The economy of nature is in this respect exactly of a piece with what it is 
upon many other occasions. . . . Thus self-preservation, and the propaga- 
tion of the species, are the great ends which Nature seems to have proposed 
in the formation of all animals. . . . But though we are in this manner en- 
dowed with a very strong desire to those ends, it has not been entrusted to 
the slow and uncertain determinations of our reason, to find out the proper 
means of bringing them about. Nature has directed us to the greater part 
of these by original and immediate instincts. Hunger, thirst, the passion 
which unites the two sexes, the love of pleasure and the dread of pain, 
prompt us to apply those means for their own sakes; and without any con- 
sideration of their tendency to those beneficent ends which the great Director 
of nature intended to produce by them.^ 

Here is quite a modern view of the nature of instinct, and it is 
perfectly clear that he considered the moral sense based on some 
such unforeseeing propensities. 

Recognition of other innate and non-utilitarian bents comes out 
in several places. In combating the idea that associations of nar- 
row "utilities" determine all our tastes or esthetic appreciations, 
he observes that those men who have the strongest desire for 
accurate watches or for many pockets in their clothes are not 
usually more punctual nor more conveniently equipped than are 
other people; also that statesmen almost never consider systems of 
government simply in relation to their effects upon the happiness 
1 Theory of Moral Sentiments, Pt. II, sec. i, ch. v, note. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADAM SMITH 49 

of the people, "From a certain love of art and contrivance we 
sometimes seem to value the means more than the end," and in 
general, if you want to stimulate a lazy man to industry or a pub- 
lic official to improvement of his system of government, do not 
speak to either one of the ultimate substantial comforts, or con- 
sumers' utilities which these reforms will secure. Speak to the one 
rather of the magnificent array of useless equipages, houses, serv- 
ants, clothes and so on which he can get as the reward of his 
labors; and to the other of the beautiful system or machine of 
curiously contrived, interconnecting political agencies which he 
will thereby have to manage (Pt. IV, ch. i). 

The sense of duty, moreover, is made up in considerable meas- 
ure, as the reader must have noticed from our account of it, of 
the instinctive desire for the approval of one's fellows. 

Nature, says Smith, when she formed man for society, endowed him with 
an original desire to please, and an original aversion to offend, his brethren. 
The AU-wise Author of Nature has, in this manner, taught man to respect the 
sentiments and judgments of his brethren. . . . He has made man, if I may 
say so, the immediate judge of mankind . . . and appointed him his vice- 
regent upon earth, to superintend the behaviour of his brethren (Pt. Ill, ch. ii, 
pp. 200, 219). 

Though we must notice that he contends against the notion 
that this desire for other peoples' approval is the whole of the 
sense of duty. 

Emphasis on Desire for Distinction 

Another universal human disposition which Adam Smith con- 
stantly dwells upon, is the craving for social distinction; and he 
expatiates on the common pursuit of it through ostentatious 
luxury. Possibly this proclivity should be reduced to the same 
psychological elements as the love of praise which he has men- 
tioned in connection with the moral sense; but Smith attributes 
the desire for social distinction to a peculiar quality of original 
sympathy, — that we sympathize with, and give attention to, the 
(real or supposed) small joys of our neighbors to a much greater 
degree than their slight sorrows. 

That he considers social ambition (however it may be accounted 
for) the main spring of economic activity — and of political 



50 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

activity too, it would seem — is made evident in very many pas- 
sages; and he recognizes the " corruption of the moral sentiments " 
which this force frequently causes. A section containing several 
chapters is devoted to the "effects of prosperity and adversity 
upon the judgments of mankind with regard to the propriety of 
action"; and there we read: 

To what purpose is all the toil and bustle of this world? What is the end of 
avarice and ambition, of the pursuit of wealth, of power, of preheminence? 
Is it to supply the necessities of nature? The wages of the meanest laborer 
can supply them. ... If we examine his economy with rigor, we shall find 
that he spends a great part of them upon conveniences, which may be re- 
garded as superfluities, and that, upon extraordinary occasions he can give 
something even to vanity and distinction. 

Is the fare and shelter of the rich so much better than that of 
the rest of us? If we reflect, we know it is not. 

From whence, then, arises that emulation which runs through all the dif- 
ferent ranks of men, and what are the advantages which we propose by that 
great purpose of human life which we call bettering our condition? To be 
observed, to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy, com- 
placency, and approbation, are all the advantages which we can propose 
to derive from it. It is the vanity, not the ease, or the pleasure, which in- 
terests us. 

Perhaps the clearest expression of this view is in the following 
sentences: 

And thus, place, that great object which divides the wives of aldermen, is 
the end of half the labors of human life; . . . People of sense, it is said, in- 
deed despise place; . . . But rank, distinction, preheminence, no man 
despises, unless he is either raised very much above, or sunk very much 
below, the ordinary standard of human nature.^ 

In the chapter mentioned above, in which he speaks of the in- 
nate love of system or of certain means without regard to the ends 
they serve, he asserts that this desire for intricate systems of ma- 
terial things is one of the strongest economic motives, more potent 
in fact than the ultimate utilities of sense. Whatever satisfactions 
there are to be derived from wealth are usually overestimated in 
the pursuing of it, he thinks, and this self-deception is a fortunate 
circumstance for society at large. To no purpose does the land- 

1 Theory of Moral Sentiments, Pt. I, sec. 3, ch. ii, pp. 81, 92. 



TEE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADAM SMITH 5 1 

lord survey his broad acres, and in imagination consume all the 
produce thereof, for the produce will inevitably chiefly feed other 
people in whom he has no interest. Then follows a passage on the 
"invisible hand," which has made self-interest promote public 
interest, in language almost identical with the passage so often 
quoted from the Wealth of Nations (Pt. IV, ch. i, pp. 317-318). 
It fortunately happens, he says, that in the lower and middle 
classes the roads to fortune and to virtue are very nearly the 
same, — honesty, sobriety, intelligence and industry are the 
requisites for getting that accumulation of wealth which is de- 
sired on account of its social prestige. In the higher ranks, un- 
happily, the conduct securing distinction is not so often the same 
as that exhibiting virtue. 

In equal degrees of merit there is scarce any man who does not respect 
more the rich and the great, than the poor and humble. With most men the 
presumption and vanity of the former are much more admired than the real 
and solid merit of the latter (Pt. I, sec. 3, ch. iii, pp. 100, 102). 

Two interesting chapters are on the "Influence of Custom and 
Fashion upon the Sentiments of Moral Approval and Disap- 
proval." He considers, as has been said, the sense of beauty and 
the sense of right conduct to be closely related. The former, he 
shows by abundant illustrations, is highly conventionalized, not 
only with respect to such matters as dress, but with regard to 
esthetic standards in the fine arts. He points out further that 
moral sentiments vary considerably in different times and places, 
although he thinks the major vices are everywhere considered re- 
volting (Pt. V, chs. i and ii). He cites the differences between the 
virtues of the followers of Charles the Second and those of the 
Puritans, and the divergent views on infanticide in ancient and 
modem times, as samples of such fortuitous warpings of moral 
judgments by custom. 

It must be evident from the foregoing that a considerable part 
of the ' theory of the leisure class ' is to be gathered from a reading 
of Adam Smith's Moral Sentiments. 

Another interesting chapter is "On the Nature of Self -Deceit, 
and the Origin and Use of General Rules." The man in the 
breast, he says, is unfortunately not always able to take a really 



52 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

impartial view of one's own situation. Frequently our desire is so 
strong as to corrupt our judgment. 

The passions, upon this account, as Father Malebranche says, all justify 
themselves, and seem reasonable and proportioned to their object, as long as 
we continue to feel them (Pt. Ill, ch. iv, p. 267). 

This fatal weakness in mankind is the source of half the human 
disorders, and it is mitigated only by our perceptions of the judg- 
ments of people who really are removed from the passions and so 
are disinterested. Eventually the general collective judgments 
upon classes of actions crystallize into formal rules of ethics ; but 
he repeats that the instinctive and sympathetic impartial feeling 
about particular cases is the origin and sole authority of such rule. 

Suggestions of Hedonism 

The sentence following the one quoted above, regarding the 
innate desire for approval of our fellows, would serve, however, to 
convict Adam Smith of being a hedonist. " She (Nature) taught 
him (man) to feel pleasure in their favorable, and pain in their 
unfavorable regard." Such traces of a pleasure-pain mechanics 
are rather frequent. He connects gratitude and resentment with 
pleasures conferred or pain inflicted (Pt. II, sec. 3, ch. i, p. 160); 
he says that sympathy with joy is agreeable, while it is painful to 
go along with grief, and therefore we always enter into the latter 
with reluctance (Pt. I, sec. 3, ch. i, p. 73) ; and in discussing prud- 
ence, he gives a straightforward summary of the tutelage of the 
appetites (of sense) and of pleasure and pain from infancy to the 
adult with full-fledged habits. At first the appetites and sensa- 
tions are the supreme motives, and development is simply of care 
and foresight in caring for these egoistic interests. But presently 
the youth perceives that the resources called fortune are desirable 
not merely to satisfy these original appetites and pleasures but 
also to win credit, rank, and distinction among his fellows. This 
latter use develops into the strongest single incentive to money- 
making. The youth also finds that upon his moral character also 
depends other peoples' respect, and hence prudence recommends 
ordinary morality to him (Pt. VI, sec. i, pp. 370-371), Also in 
many of his references to the impartial judge within the breast, 



TEE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADAM SMITH 53 

he speaks of the "acquisition" of self-command, and of the 
"habit " of viewing our situations impartially. He thinks that the 
man with most capacity for sympathizing with the passions of 
others usually has also the larger capacity for acquiring self- 
command. 

Of course he took the power of association and habit for 
granted; everyone does, they are sufficiently obvious. He was in- 
terested only to argue that the human motives are not in all 
particulars derived from associations of simple, pleasant or pain- 
ful sensations with the situations or acts through which they have 
been achieved; and that we have natural pleasures and pains 
springing from more complex instinctive courses of action. He 
rejects, definitely and emphatically, the ' utility ' explanation of 
all conduct and desires ; he was ' anti-intellectualist ' enough to 
deny that hmnan beings in general calculate and anticipate all 
the advantages and disadvantages which their various actions do 
in fact bring about. He thought it more plausible to assume an 
equipment, in every animal, of "immediate instincts" — some 
being social and some unsocial — which instincts in the whole 
creation are providentially arranged in harmony. Of course he 
uses "utility" in the narrow sense of bodily or sensuous satisfac- 
tion, whereas pleasure and pain, to him, were characteristic of all 
motives whatever, and determined whether the motives should be 
those of seeking or avoidance. 

He never drew the line very sharply between the innate and the 
acquired in the powerful passions or motives which are important 
in social life. Hunger, thirst, sex attraction, the desire for appro- 
bation, the principle of sympathy, and the general forces of sen- 
sory pleasure and pain, are the only instinctive tendencies upon 
which he is definite. The propensities to truck and barter, to 
resent injuries and feel gratitude, and to elaborate curious con- 
trivances are also spoken of as original dispositions, however, and 
apparently were considered part of that characteristic human en- 
dowment, not built up by experience or associative combinations 
of sense-utilities, which endowment was to him the main source of 
the social and moral forces. 



CHAPTER V 

THE UTILITARIAN PSYCHOLOGY: JEREMY BENTHAM 

It was the special variety of psychological hedonism which was 
taught by three utilitarian leaders, that became the heritage of 
the classical economists following Adam Smith; and to this 
psychological system modern critics ascribe many alleged short- 
comings in present-day economic doctrines. It seems worth 
while, therefore, to undertake a rather full examination of this 
part of the utilitarian system, so that when later we have con- 
sidered the testimony of present-day psychology, we can form 
some judgment as to where the utilitarian errors did, if at all, 
vitiate the economic theory of these classical economists. 

His General Psychological and Ethical System 

Jeremy Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation was 
first published in 1789. This work and his Table of the Springs of 
Action, written some time later and said to have been revised by 
James Mill, give a fairly complete and systematic exposition of 
his philosophy of motives, though there are numerous supple- 
mentary hints and statements scattered through the dozen 
volumes of his collected works. 

Bentham was an amateur psychologist, even for his time, but he 
had studied considerable ethical and poHtical literature. Two 
supposed axioms were becoming commonplace in discussions of 
those subjects at the end of the eighteenth century, and both were 
referred to interchangeably as the 'principle of utiHty.' The first 
axiom was that men naturally are moved only by pleasure and 
pain; the second was that the greatest happiness of the greatest 
nimiber is the sole or chief standard of ethical judgment. These 
doctrines are known now respectively as psychological and 
ethical hedonism. Bentham's school was remarkable for its zeal 
in attempting to put the greatest happiness ethical principle into 

54 



UTILITARIAN PSYCHOLOGY: JEREMY BENTHAM 55 

effect in political affairs, and for expounding in explicit and logical 
form the psychological hedonist premises, rather than for originat- 
ing these utiHtarian principles.^ 

Bentham's psychology, we repeat, was crude. The then-exist- 
ing works of Hartley, Hume and Brown, at least, were based on a 
much closer study of psychological facts than he ever took the 
trouble to make. But he put the common-sense hedonistic theory 
of conduct into luminous and popular form, through which it had 
the widest influence from that day to this, and his fertile mind 
carried it forward into all manner of projects for social reform. 
His disciple James Mill, however, who had studied thoroughly the 
best psychological work then available, wrote in 1829 a systematic 
treatise in which the utilitarian theory of natural motives was 
stated in compact and scientifically rigorous form. To that 
treatise we shall presently turn our attention. 

Bentham concentrates attention (so far as his psychology goes) 
upon the feelings of pleasure and pain, which according to him are 
the only efficient causes of human behavior. They are, as he 
says, the ' sovereign masters of mankind.' "It is for them alone 
to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we 
shall do," his opening paragraph states. He complains in his in- 
troduction that philosophers, including Aristotle, have neglected 
the "logic of the will" (laws of the springs of action) in favor of 
the "logic of the understanding" which latter is of importance 
only because of the understanding's direction of the will.^ How 
he defines these original driving feelings we shall see in a moment; 
here we may observe his statement that happiness, utility, one's 
interest, all reduce to the same thing, — pleasure, or the avoid- 
ance of pain. These terms, as applied to the commum'ty, mean 
the sum of the pleasures or pains of the individuals making it up. 
The principle of utility, or greatest happiness principle, "ap- 
proves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to 
the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the 
happiness of the party whose interest is in question." 

^ See references in W. C. Mitchell, "Bentham's Felicific Calculus," Pol. Sci. 
Quar., June, 1918. 

* Principles of Morals and Legislation, reprint of 1876, p. 13. 



56 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

He defends both psychological and ethical hedonism, it thus 
appears. The greatest possible amount of happiness or pleasure in 
the world is the greatest good — he brushes aside other criteria of 
the good, such as the alleged intuitive moral sense, they are 
arbitrary and anarchical — and the greatest happiness is there- 
fore the only proper aim of the legislator, as it is of every citizen. 

But each individual is in fact moved by pleasure, says Ben- 
tham; and one asks immediately, Is everything, then, as it should 
be? Do men do nothing wrong? Of course not; Bentham's life 
was a continual crusade against wrongs. Men are short-sighted in 
their pursuit of happiness, he explains; every man pursues what 
for the moment he conceives to be his best interest or good, but he 
is frequently mistaken as to the long-run results of his actions. 
The great moral reform, therefore, is education; virtue is knowl- 
edge. A passage from the Deontology, pieced together rather 
unintelligently from fragments of his writings after Bentham's 
death by the disciple Bowring, gives this doctrine in a crude form: 

It will scarcely be denied that every man acts with a view to his own 
interest — not a correct view — because that would obtain for him the 
greatest possible portion of felicity; and if every man, acting correctly for his 
own interest, obtained the maximum of obtainable happiness, mankind 
wovild reach the miUenium of accessible bliss; and the end of morality — the 
general happiness — be accomplished. To prove that the immoral action is a 
miscalculation of self-interest, — to show how erroneous an estimate the 
vicious man makes of pains and pleasures, is the purpose of the intelligent 
moralist. Unless he can do this he does nothing: for, as has been stated 
above, for a man not to pursue what he deems likely to produce to him the 
greatest sum of enjoyment is in the very nature of things impossible.^ 

So far as this statement goes, his doctrine involves the vicious 
circle: A man always acts for what he believes to be his own 
interest; and his interest is that which he does, or would do if he 
knew enough. The implication is, that a long-run and shrewdly 
calculating egotism will achieve the maximum happiness of soci- 
ety ; that there is a fundamental harmony of selfish desires which 

^ Deontology, Ch. I, p. 13. Cf. James Mill, Analysis of the Human Mind, 
Ch. XXII, sec. i: "For the value of the pleasures in question [for the sake of 
which a vicious act is performedl is infinitely outweighed by the value of the pains. 
The business of a good education is to make the associations and the values 
correspond." 



UTILITARIAN PSYCHOLOGY: JEREMY BENTHAM $7 

the moralist may painstakingly discover, and which, when dis- 
covered, will automatically lead all men to be virtuous because it 
will show them how to be most consummately selfish. It is belief 
in the beneficence of the Invisible Hand's natural order, carried to 
an extreme limit; but, as we shall see, Bentham did not cling to 
it consistently all his life. He came to think there are some 
irreconcilable conflicts of natural desires, which can be arbi- 
trated only by force — the force of society — or by artificially 
inculcated ideals. 

* Simple Pleasures ' 

Returning to the psychology with which he prefaced the 
earliest of his major works, we find a catalogue of the ' simple ' 
pleasures and pains which are the original springs of action. This 
analysis gives a definite content to the term ' self-interest,' and 
thus rescues him from the circular reasoning of naive hedonism.^ 
Directions concerning the * felicific calculus ' are given at the 
same time, that is, the principles to be observed in measuring 
pleasures and pains, and in comparing them among each other. 
These simple and primitive affections he clearly considers to be 
the only ultimate motives or sources of ' interest.' ^ The elemen- 
tary pleasures are nine of sense, including those of intoxication of 
eye and ear ("independent of association"), of health ("espe- 
cially at times of moderate bodily exertion"), of novelty or 
"gratification of the appetite of curiosity." Beside these nine 
alleged pleasures of sense, there are (in the earlier publication) 
thirteen other simple pleasures, viz.: Those of wealth, skill, 
amity, good name, power, piety, benevolence (or good-will or 
S5rmpathy), malevolence, memory, imagination, expectation, 
those dependent on association, and of relief.^ The pains are 
mostly * opposites ' of the pleasures, as Hobbes would say. 

In the Table, constructed long after the Principles of Morals 
and Legislation, he struck out the pleasures of skiU, and specifi- 

^ Morals and Legislation, Chs. IV-VI; also the Table in Works I, pp. 195-219. 
The lists are not quite the same in the two references, as will appear. 

2 Morals and Legislation, Ch. X, Motives; marginal note to sec. 2: "Nothing 
can act of itself as a motive but the ideas of pleasure or pain." 

3 Ibid., Ch. V. 



58 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

cally stated that there is no pleasure produced by labor as such. 
In common speech industry does have a connotation of interest, he 
observed, but this interest is simply the desire for the wealth 
which is to be secured by the labor.^ As Leslie Stephen remarks, 
Bentham took great delight in his own labors; but he doubtless 
considered that such satisfaction was to be attributed to curi- 
osity, moderate bodily exercise and benevolence, which are among 
his simple pleasures. His exhaustively elaborate classifications, 
such as the Table of Springs of Action (giving all the * eulogistic, 
neutral and dylogistic ' (or derogatory) names for the motive 
which springs from each pleasure, the ' corresponding interest,' 
and so on) , all serve in some degree to verify the existence in him 
of that love of system which Adam Smith had commented upon, 
and the ' pleasure of curiosity ' of his own catalogue. 

It has been pointed out by his followers as well as by critics 
that his list of simple pleasures and pains is crude. How he could 
consider the pleasures of wealth, power, memory, imagination, 
expectation, association — to go no further — as simple, a psy- 
chologist would be unable to understand. James Mill's elements 
were much nearer to real ones. But it is instructive to notice that 
he attempted in more thorough-going fashion than his predeces- 
sors whom we have examined, to reduce all human motives scien- 
tifically to a few specified elementary pleasures and pains, 
common to all mankind, which elements could be indefinitely 
varied in their combinations by association ; and that further, he 
included a few altruistic impulses among his simple pleasures. 
There is no such thing as a disinterested motive, he tells us, 
though there are motives which are not self-regarding? His great 
object is to attack the arbitrary and intuitional systems of morals, 
which he thought had tended toward moral irresponsibility in 
practical affairs, and to pin the whole ethical question upon an 
objective, impartial examination of the consequences of action 
upon human happiness. 

Although people will call any motive by a harsh name in some 
circumstances, he goes on, no motive is bad of itself. The case 
simply is that some motives more uniformly lead to good con- 

^ Works I, p. 214. ^ Ibid., p. 212. 



UTILITARIAN PSYCHOLOGY: JEREMY BENTHAM 59 

sequences for the general happiness than others. The motive of 
good-will or benevolence, in fact, usually brings about results 
that are good for society, and so it is a ' tutelary ' motive, re- 
straining the more often harmful interests. Other tutelary mo- 
tives are love of reputation, amity and religion.^ He admits of a 
hierarchy among motives, according to the preponderance of their 
effects on the community. In the Table he remarks that men in a 
savage state have existed from the first in countless multitudes, 
with scarcely a trace of the social or tutelary motives, which in- 
dicates that the self-regarding interests, are, after all, chiefly to be 
thanked for individual and racial preservation.^ 

He notices, with the classical psychologists and many other 
ancient observers, our human tendency to beget judgments by 
wishes and to try to ' rationalize ' such conclusions after we have 
jumped at them: "As hy judgment, desire, is influenced, so by 
desire, judgment: witness interest-begotten prejudice:" ^ (and 
throughout his works he frequently testified to the efficacy of 
' sinister ' or ' interest-begotten ' prejudice, which his philan- 
thropies encountered at every turn) . Since an action usually may 
be produced by several motives acting conjointly, "The best mo- 
tive that will be recognized as capable of producing the effect in 
question, is the motive to which the man himself . . . will be dis- 
posed to ascribe his conduct, and ... to exhibit it in the char- 
acter of the sole efficient cause," whilst his enemies will do the 
reverse, as is continually illustrated by party politics.'^ He gives 
quite a modern discussion of such "substituted," or as we might 
say, 'camouflaged' motives. 

The Felicific Calculus 

But we must come to the ' felicific calculus,' and to his con- 
ception of human rationality, which are the objects of so much 
suspicion by present-day social psychologists.^ 

^ Morals and Legislation, Chs. X, XI. ^ Works I, p. 2 1 6. ^ Ibid. , p. 208. 

* Ibid., pp. 218-219. See also long note in Morals and Legislation on the natural 
rights theory of government. 

^ See the excellent paper, designed to expose the pseudo-simplicity and logical 
defects of these parts of Bentham's philosophy, by Wesley C. Mitchell, "Bentham's 
Felicific Calculus," Pol. Sci. Quar., June, 1918. 



6o ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

The greatest happiness principle, says Bentham, is not merely a 
pious aspiration, but it admits of a definite quantitative logic. 
The legislator should understand how to evaluate a ' lot of pain ' 
or of pleasure, because they are at once his ends and his instru- 
ments or forces. And how evaluate them? A simple pleasure or 
pain will vary in value to an individual, Bentham replies, accord- 
ing to (i) intensity, (2) duration, (3) certainty or uncertainty, 
(4) propinquity or remoteness, (5) fecundity or chance of being 
followed by sensations of the same kind, (6) purity, or chance of 
not being followed by sensations of the opposite kind. When the 
happiness of a community is under consideration instead of that 
of an individual, a single criterion must be added to the above, 
(7) extent, or number of persons affected.-^ Is it an impossible 
task to make such a calculation? No, says Bentham. 

In all this there is nothing but what the practice of mankind, wheresoever 
they have a clear view of their own interest, is perfectly conformable to. An 
article of property, an estate in land for instance, is valuable, on what ac- 
count? On account of the pleasures of all kinds which it enables a man to 
produce ... (or pains avert). . . . But the value of such an article of 
property is universally understood to rise or fall according to the length or 
shortness of the time which a man has in it; the certainty or uncertainty of 
its coming into possession; and the nearness or remoteness of the time . . . 
it is to come into his possession.^ 

Pleasures, then, being the ultimate values of property, are dis- 
counted according to remoteness and certainty; a strong hint in 
the direction of the time-preference element in the theory of 
interest. 

It is not to be supposed, he says, that the whole elaborate 
algebraic calculation of pleasure-pain values, in units of a barely 
distinguishable difference in affective quality (compare Weber's 
unit of sensation in psychology), should be or is performed pre- 
vious to every moral judgment, or legislative operation, but it 
should be kept in view as an ideal.^ In applying the calculus, 
moreover, we must always consider thirty-two ' circumstances 
influencing sensibility ' in different individuals, such as health, 
strength, sex, sanity, climate, education, etc., — these are espe- 

^ Morals and Legislation, Ch. IV. 

2 Ibid., Ch. IV, sec. 8. ^ Ibid., Ch. IV, sec. 6. 



UTILITARIAN PSYCHOLOGY: JEREMY BENTEAM 6l 

dally to be related to the severity of punishment, so as to equalize 
the net pleasures and pains inflicted. 

He met, of course, with a difficult puzzle in spinning out this 
introspective theory. How compare different pleasures with one 
another, either within different minds or within the same mind? 
How evaluate the pleasure of a cold bath in terms of the pleasure 
of a symphony? to use Bohm-Bawerk's illustration. Can a man 
even compare the intensities of the same pleasure to him, at 
different times? ^ 

Bentham came to doubt if the intensity of feelings could be 
calculated, but at least the duration can, and the factors of re- 
moteness and certainty are also susceptible of mathematical 
treatment. Pleasures qualitatively different are impossible of 
direct comparison; it would be like comparing pears with apples, 
he says. But the idea occurred to him that an individual does 
equate all his multi-colored desires in terms of the money-unit. 
Two pleasures, for each of which he is just willing to part with a 
dollar, can be considered equal. That reHeves the difficulty in the 
case of a single agent. Does it equate the pleasures of different 
people? No, for Bentham is aware of the principle of diminishuig 
utility, or saturation of pleasure. The monarch's happiness is 
certainly greater than the laborer's, but how much greater? Not 
certainly in proportion to their respective incomes. Twice as 
happy would probably be a Hberal allowance. The idea of min- 
imizing the difficulty by using terms of small increments of feeling 
occurred to him, but was not worked out in much detail. 

So that on the whole, the feasibility of an exact hedonic calculus 
became dubious to him; but because of the commensurability of 
feehngs as to duration, certainty, remoteness and in money meas- 
ure, and the steady average of human nature which made the 
circumstances affecting sensibility seem only slightly important, 
he considered he had rendered morality and legislation exact as 
well as positive sciences. The puzzles of the calculus are of great 
interest to mathematical economists, but even if it is hopelessly 
inexact, the substance of the hedonist theory of himian motives 

^ See Mitchell's article cited above for quotations from Bentham showing his 
perplexity on this point, and on other points of the calculus. 



62 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

may nevertheless be true. We shall return to this question of 
commensurability in Chapter XVII, after we have surveyed the 
reports of modern psychology on the influence of pleasure and 
pain on motives in general. 

Human Rationality 

Returning to questions of human rationality and educability, 
we have seen that Bentham considered the great and only task of 
the intelligent moralist to be in showing people where their long- 
run interests lie. Once they see this light, morality is plain sailing, 
for inevitably people will follow their apparent ' interests,' but 
temporarily, at least, interest and duty must be made artificially 
to coincide by governmental machinery; and the older he grew, 
the more convinced he was that such was the necessary state of 
things for all time to come. In his youth he had supposed that 
statesmen would act upon the greatest happiness principle as a 
matter of course, and that he needed only to show them how they 
could best promote the general interest. When past middle life, 
however, he discovered that statesmen also prefer their own pri- 
vate advantage to the greatest happiness of their people, and he 
was forced to add to his axioms the ' universal self-preference 
principle,' and to devise cunning machinery for making the ruler's 
interest coincide with his duty, — that is, with the interests of his 
subjects.^ In his Table of the Springs of Action, he is able to sum 
up the sources of evil as follows : 

Indigenous intellectual weakness — adoptive (due to environment) intel- 
lectual weakness — or, in one word, prejudice — sinister interest (understand 
self-conscious sinister interest) lastly, interest-begotten (though not self-con- 
scious) prejudice — by one or other of these demonstrations, may be desig- 
nated (it is believed) the cause of whatever is on any occasion amiss, in the 
opinions or conduct of mankind.^ 

Is it a hopeless task to combat passion, ignorance and prejudice 
with refined measures of reward and punishment, and of educa- 
tion as to true interests? Is he assuming a too reasonable human 
nature? Bentham represents the human will always to be deter- 

1 See Mitchell, op. cit.,p. 177; and Bentham, Works I, pp. 240-259; X, pp. 79, 80. 
^ Works I, p. 217. 



UTILITARIAN PSYCHOLOGY: JEREMY BENTHAM 63 

mined by a calculation of the excess of pleasure promised by the 
contemplated action over the probable pain.^ ' Interest-begotten 
prejudice ' may be regarded as only a short-circuit to a pleasure- 
determined volition; and, if it ignores more distant personal in- 
terests, that is simply due to the general human imperfection in 
knowledge which no one has ever overlooked. To the objections 
that his schemes for reform, based on a nice adjustment of penal- 
ties to temptations, would fail because ignorance never troubles 
itself about laws, while passion does not calculate, he answered 
(in the first edition of Morals and Legislation) : 

But the evil of ignorance admits of cure: and as to the proposition that 
passion does not calculate, this, like most of these very general and oracular 
propositions, is not true. When matters of such importance as pain and 
pleasure are at stake, and these in the highest degree (the only matters, in 
short, that can be of importance) who is there that does not calculate? . . . 
I would not say, that even a madman does not calculate. (Footnote: There 
are few madmen but what are observed to be afraid of the straight waist- 
coat.) Passion calculates, more or less, in every man: in different men, ac- 
cording to the warmth or coolness of their dispositions; according to the 
firmness or irritability of their minds, according to the nature of the motives 
by which they are acted upon. Happily, of all passions, that is the most 
given to calculation, from the excesses of which, by reason of its strength, 
constancy, and universality, society has most to apprehend: I mean that 
which corresponds to the motive of pecuniary interest; so that these niceties, 
if such they are to be called, have the best chances of their being efficacious, 
where efficacy is of the most importance.^ 

That is, as to misconduct over objects of pecuniary value, the 
statesman can offset the motives to theft, etc., by deterrent pun- 
ishments which will exert just the necessary strength on the side of 
honesty. It is rather significant that in treating of individual cal- 
culations of pleasures and pains, rewards and punishments, 
Bentham so often turned to illustrations involving the use of 
money. The instances of equating different kinds of pleasures, 
and discounting future utilities, will be remembered. He asstmcies 
that we all make the same kind of reckonings on other allegedly 
primitive utilities, and he does not realize that money com- 
putations are possible only because of a great many customs, and 
institutions, and an accumulation of knowledge, which are ages 

^ Works I, p. 2og. 

2 Ibid., p. 91; Morals and Legislation, edition of 1822, Ch. XIV. 



64 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

beyond the really primitive man. Our sophisticated practices re- 
garding money values are evidently no indication of our procedure 
in estimating non-pecuniary values. The man who is angry 
enough to strike another is scarcely able to decide just how much 
he wants to strike, and how a present blow would compare in 
value with a future blow. But this is again a question of the pos- 
sible precision of the hedonic calculus; it does not necessarily 
strike at the fundamental general theory of hedonist motivation. 

Human Educability and Perfectibility 

The faith of Bentham and his school in the educabiUty of all 
men to a wise and nearly harmonious pursuit of self-interest was 
great. He knew the doctrine of association of ideas from the 
earlier philosophers, especially through his friend James Mill. 
That doctrine represented that pleasure may be associated with, 
and so furnish motive power toward, almost any object or action, 
provided the object or act and the pleasure are experienced 
several times coincidently by the subject. And contrariwise with 
pains. This teaching is made plausible, as we know, by a very 
large number of facts, both from our accidental experiences and 
from formal education with its birch rod behind the door. Artful 
education is made possible through artificial association; things 
which are already interesting, that is, pleasant or painful, must be 
used in order to arouse interest in, and knowledge of, other mat- 
ters to which we are originally indifferent. The original pleasures 
and pains are considered by the utilitarians to be few, and nearly 
uniform in strength throughout mankind, and the possibility of 
creating new interests in accordance with the educator's desire, by 
means of artificial associations, seemed unlimited. The Bentham 
school was therefore thoroughly hopeful of humanity's ultimate 
redemption from vice by education. "As respects pleasures," 
said Bentham, " the mind of man possesses a happy flexibility. 
One source of amusement being cut off, it endeavors to open up 
another, and always succeeds; a new habit is easily formed.^ 
Consequently he supported financially a number of new, educa- 
tionally reformatory projects — such as the * Chrestomathic ' 
1 Works I, p. 436, quoted in Mitchell, op. cit. 



UTILITARIAN PSYCHOLOGY: JEREMY BENTHAM 65 

school, Robert Owen's plans, and his proposed ' Panopticon ' 
penitentiary, which was to be "a mill for grinding rogues honest 
and idle men industrious." 

He professed to believe there are no innate intellectual or moral 
differences between civilized man and savage ; ^ in fact, this 
eighteenth century doctrine was held by John Stuart Mill, who 
said in his Autobiography that one of the main objects of his writ- 
ings had been to show that the apparent differences between 
races, sexes and individuals were due to environment. One can 
easily see how the associationist psychology fostered such an 
' a priori ' belief. Association seemed to have an indefinite power 
of shaping men's mental states ; and instead of the more cautious 
proposition that we will push the association explanation as far 
as it will go, before resorting to the mystical instinct or intuition 
formula, they drew the downright conclusion that natural men- 
tal equality is a fact, — that the association explanation can 
ultimately be made complete for all * apparent ' differences. 
Bentham was not always sanguine enough to hope for complete 
human perfectibility through education, however, nor did he hold 
unwaveringly to the theory of natural equality. Perhaps happi- 
ness, he wrote, is a chimera. "It may be possible to diminish the 
influence of, but not to destroy, the sad and mischievous passions. 
The unequal gifts of nature and of fortune will always create 
jealousies," etc.^ The qualifications contained in this essay were 
not kept steadily in view, however, and he is found giving advice 
to the Terrorists of the French Revolution, as well as to certain 
South American countries, as if their background had been the 
same as his own. 

The * Sanctions ' 

For purposes of government at present, and for education of 
the youth, the legislator must use sanctions, or artificial applica- 
tions of pain and pleasure, to make duty and interest coincide. 
The sanctions are brought into view in the third chapter of 
Morals and Legislation; they are listed in four classes, — physical, 

1 Mitchell, op. cit., p. 175. 

^ Influence of Time and Place on Legislation, Works I, pp. 193, 194. 



66 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

political, moral and religious. The physical sanctions are the 
pleasures and pains which result from our spontaneous contacts 
with nature. The political are artificial rewards and punishments 
employed by the sovereign. The moral * or popular ' consist in 
approval or disapproval from one's neighbors. The religious are 
the supernatural rewards or pains looked forward to. The legis- 
lator, he insists, must have an eye upon the operations of the two 
last-named sanctions as well as on his own, for they will be either 
powerful allies to him or powerful rivals. The artful use of these 
classes of motives for social welfare is the thread which connects 
all Bentham's works, for he was always trying to contribute to- 
ward "that (moral) system," as he described it, "the object of 
which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and 
law." ^ He distinguishes carefully the cases which are meet for 
political sanctions and those which had best be left to the other 
kinds, and he draws rules for the severity and kind of political 
threats. The Utilitarians' concentration of attention on the 
sanctions, in their treatment of moral and political problems, has 
often been criticized from the standpoint of human instincts, as 
by Leslie Stephen; for it is fairly clear, when we stop to think of it, 
that all men are not kept at their duty simply by fear of want or of 
the policeman. There are many binding, social ties in human 
nature, and the artificial sanctions are required only for a rela- 
tively few details. We have seen that some natural ties appear in 
Bentham's psychology, however, the * simple pleasures ' of good- 
will, amity and piety, and we shall find some other bonds in the 
psychology of James Mill. 

' Morals and Legislation, Ch. I. 



CHAPTER VI 

UTILITARIAN PSYCHOLOGY: THE TWO MILLS AND BAIN 

We are fortunate in having available an edition of James Mill's 
Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (first published 
in 1829), which is of great value for our present purposes, — 
the edition of 1869, revised and annotated by John Stuart Mill, 
Alexander Bain and others. This edition shows how far these 
later UtiHtarian psychologists had diverged from the original 
psychology of Bentham and the elder Mill. Bain was one of the 
last of the so-called associationists, and one of the first psycho- 
physical parallelists, — he was altogether a very prominent figure 
in nineteenth century psychology, writing from 1850 onward into 
William James' time. 

James Mill's Analysis of 1829 came eighty years after the psy- 
chological treatises of Hume and Hartley. From both these 
authorities, especially Hartley, Mill drew much of his doctrine, 
which provided the Utilitarian philosophy with a definite and 
simple hedonist explanation of action, and a theory of education. 
All knowledge is considered to be built up from simple sensations 
by means of association, and all motives in the same fashion are 
derived from the added dynamic character of sensations in being 
pleasant or painful. He takes up the various classes of higher 
mental processes and motives, and attempts to show how they are 
all built from these sensational elements. More than half the 
work is occupied with the theory of motives, and it is of this part 
that we shall try to give an intelligible sketch. 

The Mechanics op Association 

Sensations are the beginning of everything; they are smell, 
hearing, sight, taste, touch, those of the muscles, alimentary 
canal and other organic sensations. In recent years neurologists 
have made more refined classes of sense-organs, and the associa- 
tion theory has so much the less work to do. The Mills and Bain 

67 



68 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

attached considerable importance to our obscure and unlocaliz- 
able sensations, from internal sense-organs in surfaces, muscles 
and glands; these they connected with emotional consciousness a 
little in the fashion of the James-Lange theory.^ 

Now every sensation, says Mill, leaves a trace or copy or image, 
which can be aroused after the object that caused the sensation is 
gone. After seeing the sun, for example, the subject can shut his 
eyes and still have an experience very much like seeing the sun. 
The copy or trace thus left is the simple 'idea.' Bain thinks it is 
correlated with * tracks ' left in the brain by the sensation. Ideas 
are derived only from sensations, according to these psychologists, 
and are never innate or inborn. 

So we come to the principles governing association of ideas. 
The order in which ideas come up in our mind is not, as Hobbes 
said, "so casuall" as it seems. Ideas come in the order in which 
the original sensations occurred, which is either synchronous or 
successive.^ The complex idea of a man is composed of ideas from 
a number of sensations which we have had synchronously; the 
ideas composing a verse or prayer are associated successively, and 
can scarcely be recalled out of the customary order.^ 

Of course not all sensations felt together leave enduring associa- 
tions of ideas. Some impressions are quickly forgotten. What are 
the causes of tenacity? The strength of an association, says the 
author (meaning certainty, permanence and facility of recall), 
depends on the vividness, the frequency and the recency of the 
associated sensations. Vividness is chiefly a matter of pleasure or 
pain; a single association may thus be burned in, as with persons 
who cannot bear the sight of a surgeon who has performed a pain- 
ful operation upon them, although they feel the strongest grati- 
tude toward him. The strengthening effect of frequency is abun- 
dantly illustrated in all our learning, in language, arithmetic, 

1 E. g., Mill, Analysis, I, pp. 38, 47-50. * Ihid., Ch. m. 

3 Psychologists have always disagreed as to the ultimate principles of association. 
Aristotle, we remember, had suggested contiguity in time and place, similarity and 
contrast. Hume stated the laws to be contiguity, causation and resemblance. Mill's 
attempt to reduce them all to contiguity seems unsuccessful, and Bain concluded 
there are just two cases, contiguity and similarity (including contrast under simi- 
larity). 



PSYCHOLOGY: THE TWO MILLS AND BAIN 69 

occupations, what not. We are most certain to remember the 
chain of words or acts that we have gone over most often.^ 

In many of our firmly-estabHshed associations, Mill goes on, 
when an antecedent idea is considered of no interest but the con- 
sequent idea which it introduces is very important, we ' forget 
instantly ' the first idea, in associative recalls, and so the course by 
which we reached the interesting consequent will often be un- 
known to us. We will call it an ' unconscious inference.' Such is 
the case with the conventional signs, — words or letters, which 
impart to us interesting news; and with visceral sensations, which 
are associated with emotions. Hartley also had stressed this 
dropping from consciousness of associating links, as the links be- 
come very familiar and J. S. Mill and Bain dwell upon it as a fact 
of the first importance. We shall find, in several connections, 
that it is a fact of the greatest importance and that their notice 
of it goes far to make their psychology a true one. 

Some theory is presented in this chapter both by father and by 
son, as to the limits of possible associations. 

It seems to foUow from the universal law of association, says John MUl, 
that any idea could be associated with any other idea, if the corresponding 
sensations, or even the ideas themselves, were presented in juxtaposition 
with sufl&cient frequency. If, therefore, there are ideas which cannot be 
associated with each other, it must be because there is something that pre- 
vents this juxtaposition.^ 

Then he goes on to explain and amplify his father's theory on 
these limits. ImpossibiUty of experiencing the sensations to- 
gether, as the taste of asafoetida along with the taste of sugar, is 
one condition but not a sufficient one, since "We are but too 
capable of associating ideas together though the corresponding 
external facts are really incompatible." (That is, we draw erro- 
neous conclusions or inferences.) Hence the other condition of 
impossible association is that the one idea either contains or calls 
up by association the idea of the absence of the other. This little 
point is a clue to their belief in the great possibilities of education. 

^ Our belief in the external world and in its characters of extension, form and so 
on, MiU ascribes to invariable and inseparable associations of experiences. His son 
considered this analysis to be the great triumph of the book (Ibid., Introduction, I, 
pp. 91 ff.). 2 Ibid.,l, p. 98. 



70 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

It would be of considerable advantage to us if we could make 
ourselves familiar with James Mill's theory of knowledge and 
reasoning, and the deviations from it of his son in the Logic; but 
these are large enterprises. Suffice it here to notice that associa- 
tion of ideas derived from sensations supplies James Mill with all 
the apparatus he needs for all varieties of cognition, and his son 
with most of his logical equipment (along with a few principles of 
logical necessity which he could not quite account for in Humian 
fashion) . The immense role of language is recognized and stressed, 
and justly so. 

Pleasure, Pain and Motives 

We proceed with the mechanics of pleasure and pain in mo- 
tives, which occupies most of the second volume. Some sensations 
("probably the greater number") are indifferent; others are 
pleasurable or painful. The difference is known only by feeling, 
it is a question of whether the subject would end or prolong or 
simply neglect the sensation, if he had the power to choose.^ All 
the senses contain these three classes. (The annotators remark 
that sensations are not simply either pleasurable, painful or indif- 
ferent; the same sensation, in different degrees of intensity, may 
vary from pleasant to painful, though the quality or knowledge- 
giving element in it remains the same and can be separately at- 
tended to. This is one of the puzzles with which the theory of 
pleasure-pain still has to deal.) 

Now ideas of the events which are constant antecedents of 
pleasurable or painful sensations, and hence are supposed to be 
causes of them, are associated with the ideas of the pleasurable or 
painful and intrinsically interesting sensations. By manifold 
associations we become aware, not only of immediate causes of our 
interesting experiences, but also of remote causes; of the proc- 
esses of food supply, as well as of the food immediately before us; 
of the musician and his hire, as well as of the violin which gives 
forth the pleasant sounds. These causes, of course, are much 
more numerous than the ultimate sensations (utilities or dis- 
utilities), and since some of the remote causes, like money, present 

1 Mill, Analysis, II, Ch. XVII. 



PSYCHOLOGY: THE TWO MILLS AND BAIN 71 

greater problems than do the immediate causes once we have 
money, the remote causes are apt to occupy our attention more 
than the immediate causes.^ Money is useful only for the pleas- 
ures it will obtain, yet by constant association of it with various 
pleasures and states of relief, it frequently comes to be sought as 
an end in itself. 

His Analysis op Human Motives 

An idea of a pleasure is a desire, says Mill, and the idea of a pain 
is an aversion; but at that stage neither is a motive (Ch. XIX). 
A Motive is the idea of a pleasure associated with the idea of an 
action of our own as its cause (Ch. XXII). So we come to his 
interesting catalogue of motives, and analysis of them into sensa- 
tional elements (Chs. XXI-XXIII). The motives are classified 
according to the remote causes of pleasurable and painful sensa- 
tions, under the following heads: Wealth, power, dignity, our 
fellows, the objects called sublime and beautiful, — and their 
contraries. The first three are all means of procuring pleasure 
through other men's services. Power does this chiefly through 
fear, and is in some instances much more extensive than wealth 
can possibly be. Dignity secures respect and services through 
eminence in knowledge and wisdom, as well as in wealth and 
power. 

It is to be observed, he says, That Wealth, Power, and Dignity, derive a 
great portion of their efficacy, from their comparative amount; that is, from 
their being possessed in greater quantity than most other people possess 
them.2 

He shows in numerous other passages also that he is fully sensible 
of the strong motive force of emulation, but clearly he regards it as 
arising from the mathematical advantage of superiority, not from 
instinctive rivalry.^ Our fellows are the origins of ' affections,' 

1 MiU, Analysis, II, Chs. XVIII, XIX. 2 75^-^.^ n, p. 213. 

' It may be of interest to compare Hartley's classification of pleasures and pains 
(1749) which is almost as crude as Bentham's: "The pleasures and pains may be 
ranged under seven general classes, viz., i. Sensation; 2. Imagination (beauty or 
deformity); 3. Ambition; 4. Self-interest; 5. Sympathy; 6. Theopathy (con- 
templation of the deity) ; 7. The Moral Sense. Observations on Man, Priestly's 
edition of 1775, Introduction, p. ii. 



72 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

and hence of motives of the greatest influence; the distinguishable 
cases being friendship, kindness, family, country, party, mankind. 
But he observes, 

How few men seem to be at aU concerned about their fellow creatures! 
How completely are the lives of most men absorbed in the pursuits of wealth 
and ambition! With how many does the love of FamUy, of Friend, of Coun- 
try, or Mankind, appear completely impotent, when opposed to their love of 
wealth, or of power! This is an effect of misguided association, which re- 
quires the greatest attention in Education and Morals. ^ 

Let us notice briefly his analyses of parental affection and of the 
moral sense, as indicative of his method. First, in parental devo- 
tion there is an unusual degree of general human sympathy, which 
is due to the associative revival of our own affective feelings by the 
observation of pleasure or pain in another person. A parent is led 
by circumstances to give great attention to providing satisfactions 
for his child, and hence he sympathizes with the offspring more 
frequently than with other persons. The reflection of the child's 
good or bad behavior onto the parents, in the public mind, is an 
obvious concern to the parents. The vivacious expressions of 
children are unusually favorable to exciting sympathy. The per- 
fect dependence of the child on his guardians calls up frequent 
imaginings in the parent of the pains which would occur to the 
little one upon any relaxation of the parental care ; and the idea of 
power over another person has become agreeable by other asso- 
ciations. Again, we imagine in Hvely fashion the pleasures which 
our acts of beneficence afford and so when we have frequently 
benefited any creature, whether a fellow man or a lower animal, 
that creature becomes an object of affection to us. That these and 
similar associations make up parental affection is demonstrated, 
he thinks, by the fact that just as strong affection may be de- 
veloped for an adopted child as for one's own offspring, and not 
infrequently, for various reasons, people care nothing for their 
own children. Family affection, he says, is markedly deficient in 
families of extreme poverty or of very great opulence, because of 
the unfavorable associations which are afforded by these situa- 
tions. In the mother there are the peculiar associations of sen- 

^ Analysis, II, p. 215. 



PSYCHOLOGY: THE TWO MILLS AND BAIN 73 

sations in gestation and nursing, along with her knowledge that 
the infant soon connects her with all the pleasures it is capable of 
enjoying.^ 

Bain notes that several other sensational elements must be 
considered, as of touch in folding and embracing, the sensibiHties 
of the tear glands, of the throat or larynx. "The pleasure of 
Tender FeeUng must therefore be pronounced to have an inde- 
pendent standing in the sentient framework, although susceptible 
of being analyzed into the primary pleasures of the senses, to- 
gether with the influence of association," says Bain.^ 

The so-called Moral Sense, or regard for the virtues of Pru- 
dence, Courage, Justice and Benevolence, is analyzed exhaus- 
tively in one of the final chapters (XXIII) , and it boils down to 
original associations of sensuous and material advantage to the 
agent himself from his own prudence and courage, and from the 
virtuous conduct of others ; also to revivals of pleasant feeling at 
the perception of the same advantages to others from the practice 
of virtue in general. The motives to benevolence are not confined 
to the hope of reciprocal benefits in kind ; they include the power- 
ful incentive of praise from our fellows. Praise is valued orig- 
inally for the disposition it creates, in widening circles, among 
other people to render us services, but by constant associations, 
as in so many other cases what was originally means to an end be- 
comes sought for its own sake, and the full course of the associa- 
tion is forgotten by the agent. Such is the case in the inordinate 
love of fame — which is often seen — and in the desire for post- 
humous praise, or merely to be praiseworthy, which are often 
strong enough to induce a person to sacrifice his life. Mill notices 
. that Adam Smith expatiates on this last-named motive (praise- 
worthiness) but he thinks Smith did not successfully analyze it.^ 
He is fully sensible of the great part which social approval plays in 
the regulation of all human conduct, from the nursery onward, 
and he realizes the necessity of discriminating use of it : 

When Education is good, no point of morality will be reckoned of more 
importance than the distribution of Praise and Blame; no act will be con- 
sidered more imm oral than the misapplication of them. They are the great 

^ Mill, Analysis, II, Ch. XXI, sec. 2. 

^ Ibid., II, p. 232. ^ Ibid., II, pp. 294-298. 



74 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

instruments we possess for insuring moral acts on the part of our Fellow- 
creatures; and when we squander them away, or prostitute those great 
causes of virtue, — we do what in us Hes to lessen the quantity of Virtue and 
thence of Felicity, in the world.^ 

Bain adds a long note (pp. 302-307) saying that other factors 
must be used to account for the other-regarding social virtues 
than associations of personal egoistic interests. He stresses the 
influence of sympathy, the essence of which is "that the sight of 
misery in others prompts us, irrespective of our own interest, to 
enter into, and to relieve, that misery." But sympathy is "not an 
ultimate law of the mind." It is just one case of "the tendency of 
every idea to act itself out, to become an actuality, not with a 
view to bring pleasure or to ward off pain — which is the proper 
description of the will — but from an independent prompting of 
the mind that often makes us throw away pleasure and embrace 
pain." ^ Bain's stress on the Idee fixe was doubtless one of the 
early chapters in the history of that vague doctrine of ' ideomotor 
action ' which has cropped up in all manner of anti-hedonist 
schools. At this point he properly emphasizes the effect of habits 
which were acquired originally under the governance of pleasure- 
pain, which influence, as we have seen, James Mill had not 
neglected. 

The Will 

A brief notice of these three authors' discussions of the Will 
will help us with some parts of the modern dissection of motives 
(Ch. XXIV). James Mill's account is essentially that of Hartley, 
and the main points are agreed to by his son and Bain. The Will 
to them is the state of mind immediately preceding an action, — 
therefore the cause of the action. Now some actions, says Mill, 
follow immediately upon sensations; these are what are now 
called reflexes, or simple instincts. Sneezing, breathing, dilation 
of the pupils, movement of the internal muscles, etc., he mentions 
as examples. From these involuntary sensation-movements or 
reflexes are derived by association, he thinks, actions following 
ideas. The idea of the pain or pleasure which resulted from an act 
is associated, by contiguity, with the idea of the sensation which 
^ Mill, Analysis, II, p. 300. 2 /jj^;.^ n, p. 305. 



PSYCHOLOGY: THE TWO MILLS AND BAIN 75 

gave rise to the act; and so there comes about the possibility of 
repeating the act by recalling the idea of it without experiencing 
the original stimulating sensation. Children at first wink their 
eyes only involuntarily, from painful contacts with the eyes; but 
they learn to wink at the idea of pain, suggested by the threat of a 
contact. 

In similar fashion, observation of the performance of an act 
which we have once performed from sensations is very frequently 
a stimulus to imitation of the action. 

"There is more or less of a propensity to imitation in all men," 
Mill says, and gives numerous examples. But by propensity he 
does not mean what we call instinct; he has expressed himself 
elsewhere on that odious synonym for intuition or innate idea : 

When Professor Stewart, therefore, and other writers, erect it (belief in the 
future) into an object of wonder, and tell us they can refer it to nothing but 
instinct; which is as much as to say, to nothing at all; the term instinct, in all 
cases, being a name for nothing but their own ignorance; they only confessing 
their failure in tracing the phenomena of the mind to the grand comprehen- 
sive law of association. 1 

The original reflexes and the quasi-automatic acting-out of 
ideas, such as laughing and imitative yawning, are all involuntary. 
Curiously enough he gives as an example of involuntary action 
the same illustration which William James used to refute the he- 
donistic theory of action: 

Shedding tears at the hearing of a tragic story, we do not desire to weep; 
laughing at the recital of a comic story, we do not desire to laugh .^ 

To Mill there was no paradox here; it is the voluntary actions, 
those directed toward a conscious end, which most need explain- 
ing, and these may be explained, he thought, by the principles of 
association with pleasure and pain. 

In this case of voluntary action, the idea of a pleasure arises 
through some course of association; such a represented pleasure is 
ipso facto a desire. It in turn recalls by association the idea of an 
act of ours which would procure the pleasure, and that idea is im- 
mediately connected with a stored-up copy of the sensation which 
reflexly produces the action. Such associations are formed only 

1 Mill, Analysis, I, Ch. XI, pp. 375, 376, 2 /j^.^ n, p. 350. 



76 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

slowly, and we do in fact only very gradually acquire voluntary 
command over our muscles through practice, which strengthens 
the associations or habits that make up the learned acts. Now 
from these chains of associations. Mill and Hartley often point 
out, the less interesting links disappear from consciousness, and so 
when William James asks himself why he is writing, he can trace 
no introspective cause except that he had begun and finds himself 
still writing. Bain adds some observations concerning the relation 
of the emotions to action, the learning process, and illustrations of 
the fixed idea principle, all of which link up Mill's account with 
modern views. 

Assuming that various motives are developed, then, by ex- 
periences of pain and pleasure and recollection of them and the 
means they were obtained by, Mill goes on to the subject of con- 
flict of motives. The relative strength of different motives toward 
determining our action, depends on the principles of frequency, 
vividness, etc., of the associations which make up the motives. 
An imprudent action is one in which the better motive (that which 
will lead to a final net gain in pleasure) is not strongly enough in- 
trenched; the person has insufficient knowledge, or has it not 
sufficiently impressed upon his character (Ch. XXII). J. S. Mill's 
note explains definitely: 

What makes the one or the other (motive) more powerful, is (conform- 
ably to the general laws of association) partly the intensity of the pleasur- 
able or painful ideas in themselves, and partly the frequency of repetition of 
their past conjunction with the act, either in experience or in thought. In the 
latter of these two consists the efficacy of education in giving a good or a bad 
direction to the active power.^ 

We find no mention of a possible felicific calculus in James 
Mill's psychology. His account of volition shows that the agent is 
pushed from behind by the associative mechanism, rather than 
lured into action by a quick calculation of all its sensuous con- 
sequences to him. But these two conceptions become one, when 
we remember that part of the associative mechanism may become 
unconscious, according to Mill, and so the agent may not be able 
to trace his action introspectively to considerations of pleasure or 
pain, although it is in fact determined by the original reflexes or 
^ Mill, Analysis, II, p. 262 note. 



PSYCHOLOGY: THE TWO MILLS AND BAIN 77 

pleasures, plus their accretions of associations, — by ' calcula- 
tion,' that is, in the sense of the rattling off of a chain of associa- 
tions. 

Transfer or Interest 

We may now get a clearer light on the Utilitarian psychology as 
a whole by considering the net advance of John Stuart Mill over 
his father and Bentham, as to the doctrine that pleasure and pain 
are the instigators of all action. 

One of the principal changes made by John Mill in the utili- 
tarian theory, it will be remembered, was his disavowal of Ben- 
tham's dictum that *' amounts of pleasure being equal, push-pin is 
as good as poetry," and his admission of a hierarchy among pleas- 
ures.^ Jevons followed him in this respect,^ but Bain considered 
the concession a mistake,^ and to the present writer the question 
seems far from closed. But putting aside the question of ultimate 
good, we find that the younger Mill was at one with the earlier 
associationists in emphasizing some phases of the hedonistic ac- 
count which are now usually ignored, but which give the Utili- 
tarian psychology of motives a very different aspect than that in 
which it is usually presented. 

In the first place, as we have seen, they conceded the existence 
of numerous innate reflexes which have the automatic character 
attributed to instincts, and which operate independently of any 
calculations of pleasure and of any foresight and pain. Examples 
are laughing, crying, sneezing, winking, continuing pleasant acts. 
Probably they underestimated the number of these ready-made 
automatisms, and doubtless Bentham's ' simple pleasures ' make 
a poor list of instincts; but at any rate all the associationists did 
acknowledge several original behavior-tendencies. 

In the next place, the coercive power of habit, in the face 
of changed conditions of feeling-consequences, and the related 
phenomenon of the transfer of motivating power and pleasure 
from an original pleasant end to the means whereby that end has 
been frequently sought, so that finally this motive will persist in 
compelling power even though the original pleasures have faded 

^ See his Utilitarianism, pp. 17 ff. ^ Theory of Pol. Econ., p. 25. 

3 J, S. Mill, A Criticism (1882), p. 113. 



78 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

away, was a cardinal point in the associationist doctrine ever since 
Hartley. It underlies the theory of indefinite human educability, 
which, as we have seen, was strenuously expounded by Bentham; 
and J. S. Mill never tired of exhibiting this psychological principle 
and relating it to ethical theory. The very word ' transfer,' which 
is now the favorite term of the Freudians for the same phe- 
nomenon, was frequently used by John Mill and by Bain, while 
the essential facts were frequently adverted to by James Mill, 
Hartley and even Bentham.^ James Mill usually illustrated it by 
the acquired passion for money, but he also taught that the love of 
power, dignity, fame, and persons could be similarly transferred, 
so that a man will die for fame or for a beloved person, either of 
which was originally valued by him as a means to some pleasur- 
able ends, but have become ends in themselves.^ In his Logic, 

1 E. g., the statement quoted above, "A new habit is easily formed"; and Ben- 
tham's advocacy, in The Rationale of Reward, of daily wages to all officials of the 
state, for the sake of inculcating pleasant associations with the scene of their duty. 

2 See Vol. II, pp. 215, 219, 266, and elsewhere. Cf. Hartley: "It is also worthy 
of observation, that riches, honor, power, learning, and all other things that are con- 
sidered as means of happiness, become means and ends to each other in a great 
variety of ways, thus transferring upon each other all the associated pleasures which 
they collect from different quarters. . . ." Human Nature, Priestley's edition of 
177s, PP- 292-297. 

We select two passages out of many from the writings of John Mill: 
"This portion of the laws of human nature is the more important to psychology, 
as they show how it is possible that the moral sentiments, the feelings of duty, and of 
moral approbation and disapprobation, may be no original elements of our nature, 
and may yet be capable of being not only more intense and powerful than any of the 
elements out of which they may have been formed, but may also, in their maturity, 
be perfectly disinterested: nothing more being necessary for this, than that the ac- 
quired pleasure and pain should have become as independent of the native elements 
from which they are formed, as the love of wealth and of power not only often but 
generally become, of the bodily pleasures, and rehef from bodily pains, for the sake 
of which, and of which alone, power and wealth must have been originally valued. 
No one thinks it necessary to suppose an original and inherent love of money or of 
power; yet these are the objects of two of the strongest, most general, and most per- 
sistent passions of human nature; passions which often have quite as little reference 
to pleasure or pain, beyond the mere consciousness of possession, and are in that 
sense of the word quite as disinterested, as the moral feeUngs. ..." — Note in 
J. Mill's Analysis, Vol. II, p. 234. 

"To do as one would be done by and to love one's neighbor as oneself constitute 
the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. As the means of making the nearest ap- 
proach to this ideal, utility would enjoin, first that laws and social arrangements 



PSYCHOLOGY: THE TWO MILLS AND BAIN 79 

Mill also criticizes the Bentham school of politics for considering 
rulers to be governed wholly by narrow self-interest. Rulers' 
actions are determined, not only in some degree by a sense of duty 
and philanthropy, but quite largely by convention and tradition. 
Mill says, "and no one will understand or be able to decipher 
their system of conduct who does not take all these things into 
account." ^ The Utilitarians, therefore, were not at a loss for an 
answer to the old objection to hedonism, that people are con- 
stantly doing things in which they have no pleasure. We may find 
that their answer was inadequate, but at this stage we may ab- 
solve them from the imputation of ridiculous blindness to ideal 
motives, which has been foisted on them by their more ' idealistic ' 
ethical opponents. 

No one who has considered the facts of association or of 
habit-formation, moreover, should hold that the appearance of 
' artificial simplification ' is any indication that the associationist- 
hedonist explanation of conduct is a false one.^ So is the explana- 
tion that water is made up of two gases an artificial simplification; 
and any psychological analysis of the full-grown human impulses 
must be unnaturally simple-appearing or else useless. The at- 
tractiveness of McDougall's scheme of elementary instincts, as 
compared with the associationists' scheme, has been partly in the 
congenial and life-like aspect which the former presents; those 

should place the happiness or (as speaking practically it may be called) the interest 
of every individual as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of the whole; 
and secondly that education and opinion, which have so vast a power over human 
character, should so use that power as to establish in the mind of every individual an 
indissoluble association between his own happiness and the good of the whole, espe- 
cially between his own happiness and the practice of such modes of conduct, nega- 
tive and positive as regard for the universal happiness prescribes; so that not only he 
may be unable to conceive the possibility of happiness to himself consistent with con- 
duct opposed to the general good, but also that a direct impulse to promote the gen- 
eral good may be in every individual one of the habitual motives of action and the 
sentiments connected therewith may fill a large and prominent place in every human 
being's sentient existence." — UtiUtarianism, pp. 38, 39. Cf. Logic, Bk. VI, ch. ii, 
sec. 4. 

1 Logic, Bk. VI, ch. viii, sec. 3. 

2 Wesley Mitchell, for instance, thinks that no more need be said to discredit it 
(Bentham's Felicific Calculus, p. 183), and many other refutations are based on this 
common-sense incredulity. 



8o ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

* instincts ' of his are very much like the adult motives which we 
recognize from introspection, and which to introspection appear 
simple and unanalyzable. Contrariwise, because we so often find 
ourselves reasoning we incline to accuse McDougall of over- 
simplification because he does not make reason an element in 
motives. Of course the real question between McDougall and the 
associationists is whether the units McDougall uses are really in- 
nate units which are not due to individual experience, and which 
cannot be broken up by artificial associations. If it should prove 
that the true instinctive cores of human motives are much simpler 
than the functional psychology has represented, and that these 
units are organized by experience on associative principles, then 
we may find the associationists to be nearer right than the 
functionalists. 

It is hoped that we have now a more accurate idea of what 
utilitarian or hedonist ' intellectuaUsm ' was, so far as motives are 
concerned, than we should gain by reading merely the current 
social psychologies, or secondary works. We shall turn next to the 
more recent discussions of these psychological questions, and we 
shall not neglect to inquire how far the dynamic psychology of the 
Mills in its larger aspects, has actually been exploded. The result 
will contribute something toward an evaluation of the psy- 
chological foundations of our modern economic theory, which as 
our critics have said, seem to be largely identical with the assump- 
tions underlying the classical economics. 



PART II 

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF 
MOTIVES 



CHAPTER VII 
THE NEWER POINT OF VIEW IN PSYCHOLOGY 

The Physiological and Behavior Emphasis 

We pass now to more recent theories on the nature and relation- 
ship of our motive-elements, — instincts, reason and so on. 

To account for our selection of material from the vast archives 
of scientific psychology, a few remarks may be useful as to the 
newer point of view which has been coming into this science since 
the days of the associationists, — namely, the biological, physi- 
ological, or behavior point of view. 

The older psychologists held that when one ' idea ' (i. e., mental 
state) is uniformly found immediately to be followed by another 
' idea,' the first is to be considered the cause of the second; and 
that the principal task of psychology was to seek for such se- 
quences.^ Many of them, moreover, believed that ' mind ' has a 
ghostly existence of its own, only partially tied down to the body; 
and consequently their chief concern was with introspective 
* analysis of consciousness.' 

The increasing modern tendency, however, is toward the 
hypothesis that "mental action," as William James expressed it, 
is "uniformly and absolutely a function of brain-action [or rather, 
let us say, of the whole neuro-muscular response-mechanism], 
varying as the latter varies, and being to the brain-action as 
effect to cause." ^ The old doctrine of interaction, which held 
that ' the mind,' by its volitions, frequently suspends the physico- 
chemical laws of the body, is now defended by but few psy- 
chologists, because it conflicts with too many of our more firmly 
established beliefs concerning the conservation of energy in the 
universe at large, and also because the proportion of facts about 
mental life which fits the above mechanistic hypothesis is con- 
stantly increasing. 

^ See Mill's Logic, Bk. VI, ch. iv. * Briefer Course, p. 6. 

83 



84 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

Many authorities still prefer not to speak of neural action as 
the * cause ' of mental phenomena, to be sure; they use such terms 
as psychophysical parallelism or the double aspect of experience; 
but nearly always they concede that, on the one hand, no con- 
sciousness ever occurs without a certain concurrent nerve-action, 
but on the other hand, numerous nerve processes do occur with- 
out effecting any immediate modification of consciousness. These 
latter unconscious nerve processes, however, often do help to 
determine later states of consciousness in a way quite mysterious 
to the subject, as when a person in hypnosis remembers details of 
a strange house which had escaped his waking attention, or a 
neurotic suffers an obsession on account of some long-forgotten 
experience, or when the name we had vainly tried hours ago to 
recall suddenly slips into our mind. It becomes probable, in 
other words, that any momentary consciousness is fully explicable 
only by the history of the subject's nervous system, and not by 
any record of his past mental states.^ 

There is, therefore, a growing disposition to regard the formula- 
tion of a mental function which runs in physiological terms, as a 
more fundamental explanation than the merely ' psychological ' 
statement which confines itself chiefly to introspective appear- 
ances or to gross bodily behavior. From this point of view, a 

^ Titchener, A Beginner's Psychology (1915), p. 96: "It is quite certain that 
nervous forces or tendencies — think of the force of habit! — may guide and direct the 
course of our thotights, even though they do not themselves contribute to thought, even 
though (that is) they have no sensory or imaginal correlates," p. 248: "The actor, 
oftentimes, cannot make his action plausible, even to himself, when he tries to state 
his ' reasons ' : but the sympathetic historian can trace the influence of tendencies 
which had no mental correlates, and whose existence was therefore unsuspected by 
their possessor." Woodworth, Dynamic Psychology (1918), p. 35: "Consciousness 
is not a coherent system, because much of the process that is partly revealed in con- 
sciousness goes on below the threshold of consciousness." 

A strong modern champion of interaction is McDougall, Body and Mind, who 
almost converted Stout from parallelism. See the latter 's lengthy examination of the 
two hypotheses in his Manual of Psychology (3d edition, 1913), Introduction, Ch. 
III. 

Some of the behaviorists think they solve the riddle of mind and body by "Epi- 
stemological Monism," i. e., the doctrine that consciousness is the response itself. 
See James, Essays in Radical Empiricism; and Holt, The Freudian Wish, pp. 172 ff., 
and The Concept of Consciousness. As Santayana points out, this is merely an in- 
verted metaphysical idealism. If it be objected that our inability to define con- 



NEWER POINT OF VIEW IN PSYCHOLOGY 85 

characterization of any given instinct, for instance, in terms of the 
stimuli and the reflex circuits, etc., involved in the response, 
is more thoroughgoing and fruitful than any description of the 
emotional excitement which attends the instinct's exercise, or any 
statement of the end toward which the creature feels himself to be 
striving. It is believed that the nerve processes underlying the 
psychic functions, besides being more continuous and funda- 
mental than the latter, are also more open than these to many- 
sided, dispassionate examination by ocular, chemical and other 
tests, so that the psychological laws which use physiological 
analysis are more difficult for myths to inhabit than those which 
run in terms of unstandardized ' ideas ' and ' purposes.' 

The ' behavior ' movement extends this newer attitude to the 
proposition that psychology's chief value is to explain how and 
why people act, to the end that their actions may be more intelli- 
gently controlled. Experiments with carefully arranged stimuli, 
and observations of the responses and their physiological mech- 
anisms, are mainly relied on for such a science, and evidence from 
the subject's consciousness is much less relied upon. 

Place of Animal Psychology 

This shift in emphasis explains the great amount of attention 
now given to comparative and ' animal ' psychology; for if we do 
not confine ourselves to introspective evidence, the evolutionary 
or genetic approach has the same advantages, in the way of be- 
ginning with simpler problems, in the complex subject of motives 
that it has in biology or physiology. The responses of simple or- 
ganisms to a few stimuli in their environment are motives of a 
simple kind. Some behaviorists, as Watson and Holt, are for dis- 
carding all subjective evidence; but the moderate and more 
general view is that consciousness is a valuable indication of 
many physiological states and responses which are too obscure to 
be observable by other methods at present.^ We do desire, as 

sciousness in terms other than itself throws doubt on the validity of all physiological 
psychology, the reply is that our knowledge of the conditions of its production, as in 
the case of electricity, constitutes a partial acquaintance with its nature which is as 
real as is our acquaintance by introspection, and which now promises more power 
to control mental phenomena. ' Cf. Woodworth, op. cit., Ch. II. 



86 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

Jevons said, to maximize the agreeable states of feeling, but the 
behaviorists would retort that this is only to say that we want 
what we want, which is what we can be seen by an outside ob- 
server to choose. 

It will be apparent that these methods and kinds of evidence 
have always been used in some degree by all psychologists. Some 
physiology and some reference to the lower animals, some formu- 
lation of stimulus and response, is familiar since Aristotle; and 
Bain, Spencer and William James especially used quite shrewdly 
all the physiological knowledge which was at their disposal. But 
it remains true that comparative and evolutionary psychology 
has become especially prominent in the last generation through 
such leaders as Baldwin, Hobhouse, McDougall and Dewey; and 
the strict attention to neural mechanisms has been pecuHarly 
characteristic of a group of workers inspired by James, such as 
Thorndike, Yerkes, Watson, Dunlap, Woodworth, and Holt. 
The present writer believes, in accordance with the considerations 
set forth above, that close attention to the biological aspects of 
motives is the most effective preventive of myth-making, and so 
we shall use evidence and concepts which are more familiar to the 
two last-mentioned groups of authorities, than to the hitherto 
dominant but more preponderantly introspective schools of 
Wundt, Stout and Titchener. It is not so much a matter of con- 
flict between these classes of authorities, as of emphasis and pro- 
portion. 

The Freudian school, so far, is strongly introspective and out 
of touch with modern exact psychological methods, but its own 
methods and conclusions are so suggestive on the subject of mo- 
tives that we are bound to consider them carefully.^ 

Any reader who is interested in the sociological writers, such as 
Tarde, Le Bon, and Giddings, will notice that McDougall's is the 

1 Some interesting observations on the above topics are contained in H. W. 
Chase's "Psychology and Social Science," Am. Jour. Psy., 28: 216-228 (1917)- He 
argues that social science must turn to the behaviorists, in the moderate sense, for a 
solid psychological foundation. See also E. S. Abbott, "The Biological Point of 
View in Psychology," Psy. Rev. 23: 117-128 (1916). The first two lectures of the 
excellent little book by Woodworth above mentioned give a brief and impartial ac- 
count of the various movements in psychology. Woodworth emphasizes that the 



NEWER POINT OF VIEW IN PSYCHOLOGY 87 

only professed ' social psychology ' to which we refer. We do not 
doubt the great value of these other social psychologies, but the 
chief need of investigation at present appeared to us to be on the 
fundamentals of individual motives, which are the instincts and 
the principles of learning. What the environmental and social 
factors are, which do normally contribute to our characters, make 
a large subject for further investigation, and in that connection 
these sociological works could not be ignored. All of them, how- 
ever, need some pruning by the results of the researches we have 
consulted, for they have used assumptions concerning instincts, 
habits, reason, and feeling, which are obsolete in present-day 
psychology, or are fast becoming so. 

Outline of the ' Behavior Situation ' 

Now let us recall the outstanding facts concerning the "be- 
havior situation," as Professor Holt caUs it. The living organism, 
be it amoeba or man, is a mechanism which manufactures from 
its food certain organic chemical compounds which are analogous 
to explosives, in that when they are suddenly disintegrated by 
appropriate stimuli, they release a quantity of energy which is 
large in proportion to the energy of the stimulus. These com- 
pounds are stored by nutrition in all the living cells, including the 
neurons or nerve-cells, though it is the muscle-cells which spe- 
cialize in the discharge of the kinetic energy which produces gross 
bodily movements. The nervous system (or its analogues in the 
lowest creatures) coordinates the activities of the body — of its 
separate parts with each other, and of the whole body with its 
environment — by means of a multitude of reflex arcs, or reflex 
nerve circuits. 

The reflex circuit in its simplest form is a sensory neuron or 
nerve, terminating in an end-organ or receptor (as in the eye, for 

aim of the science is and always has been to understand the "workings of the mind," 
i. e., "how we learn and think and what leads people to feel and act as they do." It 
is a question, he says, of the dynamics, or of the chains of cause and effect. Watson 
expounds the view that psychology's mission is only to promote the control of be- 
havior, in his Behavior, An Introduction to Comparative Psychology (1914), and in 
"An Attempted Formulation of Behavior Psychology," Psy. Rev. 24: 329-352 
(1917). 



88 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

example) which contains a substance sensitive to a particular ob- 
jective stimulus, such as light-waves or sound-waves or certain 
chemical or tactual effects. Upon the reception of a stimulus, 
the sensory neuron discharges some of its liberated energy into a 
connective neuron in the central nervous system (spinal cord and 
brain), and this impulse explodes the central neuron which in turn 
gives an impulse to the motor neuron that is in contact with the 
muscle-cell. Probably no circuit as simple as this actually exists in 
the human body, for the central nervous system is a maze of bil- 
Hons of neural fibers which almost bewilders the physiologists. 
Between the sensory and motor neurons there may intervene a 
number of central cells, as the latter usually have several branches 
and are links in several systems at the same time. Thus the im- 
pulse from a single sense-organ may be transmitted simulta- 
neously to several motor nerves or to but one out of a group of 
possible destinations. Conversely, several stimuli may be de- 
livered to one motor tract, reinforcing one another. But in spite 
of such complications, all behavior is believed to be analyzable 
into combinations of reflex circuits identical in principle with the 
simple one above described. 

These ramifying circuits determine the creature's behavior ac- 
cording to the stimuli which reach him; taken together they con- 
stitute his ' action system.' The location and functioning of the 
sensory and motor neurons are relatively fixed and unchangeable, 
like fingers and toes, and some of the central connections are too, 
as those of reflexes such as the knee-jerk or sneezing. Every or- 
ganism has some complex circuits provided ready-made by hered- 
ity which take care of him in the situations usual to his kind; 
these are the machinery of his reflexes and instincts. And all or- 
ganisms are capable of some amount of learning, that is, of acquir- 
ing responses in addition to, or superseding, their instinctive 
actions in certain situations. Learning evidently involves the 
forming of new connections within the central nervous ' ex- 
change.' The extent and peculiarities of these instinctive mech- 
anisms, and the principles of learning or of habit-formation, are 
the fundamental problems of modern psychology. 



NEWER POINT OF VIEW IN PSYCHOLOGY 89 

Relation of Behavior to Consciousness 

But how are we to connect facts of this nature with the facts of 
consciousness? Since we do not believe in losing sight of the 
evidence from introspection, we consider it advisable to link the 
two together as intelligibly as possible. We must beware of mak- 
ing important results depend on any particular theory, because no 
theory is well established as yet, but it will be helpful to us if we 
have a tentative working hypothesis. The most probable hypoth- 
esis seems to be (i) that consciousness is made up entirely of 
sensations and images; (2) that sensations are constantly corre- 
lated with definite responses or reflex circuits; and (3) that 
images are correlated with these same responses when the latter 
are stimulated to a low degree of activity, — when they are in- 
cipient or implicit responses, as some of the behaviorists would 
say. 

Let us expound and defend this hypothesis a little further. We 
assume, it is seen, the general doctrine of sensationalism, i. e., that 
sensations are the original source of all mental experience. That 
question is highly controversial, but Titchener brings a host of 
other authorities to our support.^ Now it is no longer plausible 
to psychologists that a neural impulse merely comes to the brain 
from the sense-organs, produces there a sensation, and then 
lingers in some ante-room until the brain decides what to do about 
it. As Watson says: 

So far as we know no such thing occurs. The nervous system functions in 
complete arcs. An incoming impulse exerts its effect relatively immediately 
upon one system of effectors or another, as shown by inhibition, reinforce- 
ment, summation phenomena in the muscle in question, or by inciting wholly 
new effectors to activity.^ 

William James taught long ago that all consciousness is con- 
joined with some kind of complete reflex arcs or movement,^ and 
this doctrine has become probably the most common one. The 
incoming, or afferent, impulse makes its way outward and thereby 

* See his Experimental Psychology of the Thought Processes (1909). 
^ J. B. Watson, Behavior, an Introduction to Comparative Psychology (1914), 
p. 19. 

^ See Briefer Course, Ch. XXIII, on "Consciousness and Movement." 



90 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

produces some sort of response, though not necessarily a response 
which can be detected by crude observation. The sensation- 
consciousness, therefore, is known simply to be a correlate of the 
whole response, not yet of any one part of it. 

Some difficulty may be felt with the hypothesis, however, in 
the case of quiet thought. Where are the reflexes underlying this 
kind of consciousness? The answer is that thought is (as the sen- 
sationalist believes) a series of images, or faint reproductions of 
past sensations, intermingled always with some actual sensations 
from present stimulations of the thinker's body. Now we sup- 
pose, in common with Watson, Holt and others, that these ideas or 
rather images are correlated with slight innervations (initiated at 
some remove by peripheral stimulation and spreading thence by 
' association ' within the central nervous system) of the central 
tracts and responses in muscles or glands, which innervations are 
not intense enough to bring about ' overt ' action, but which do 
cause tonicity or a slight tension and readiness to respond. Thus 
your thoughts which are verbal are accompanied (we assume) by 
slight responses of the vocal apparatus, larynx, tongue, etc. This 
tension causes many people to experience fatigue in the throat at 
hearing music, especially singing, and one always hears better a 
proper name after he has already pronoimced and learned how to 
spell it. If you merely imagine the appearance of the sun, the 
slight response is presumably in whatever neuro-muscular system 
was active when you did actually see it in a contemplative atti- 
tude. If you are hungry and think of your favorite food, the 
incipient flow of saliva is easily detected. The evidence of this 
correlation of images with ' implicit behavior ' is still roundabout 
and fragmentary, but it rounds out intelligibly the view that 
some kind of response, or at least of neural activity, accompanies 
all consciousness, and it is acquiring considerable psychological 
authority.^ It is really only the central nervous action which we 

^ See Watson, op. cit., pp. i6ff. He says "Where explicit behavior is delayed 
(i. e., where deliberation ensues), the intervening time between the stimulus and 
response is given over to implicit behavior (to 'thought processes')- • • • The 
larynx and tongue we believe are the loci of most of the phenomena." Cf. Holt, 
op. cit., pp. 60 ff., 98 and Supplement. C. Judson Herrick, the eminent neurologist, 
also gives some support to the view: "No part of the nervous system has any signif- 



NEWER POINT OF VIEW IN PSYCHOLOGY 91 

assume to be indispensable to the production of sensations or 
images, we are not bound to any particular degree of incipient 
response. The usefulness of a hypothesis of the foregoing sort 
will become especially evident when we consider the problems of 
Reasoning. 

So much, then, for a bird's-eye view of the elementary appara- 
tus of motives. The details, it is hoped, will become more intel- 
ligible as we proceed. 

icance apart from the peripheral receptor and effector apparatus with which it is 
functionally related. This is true not only of the nervous mechanism of all phys- 
iological functions, but even of the centers concerned with the highest manifesta- 
tions of thought and feeling of which we are capable, for the most abstract mental 
processes use as their necessary instruments the data of sensory experience directly 
or indirectly, and in many, if not all, cases are intimately bound up with some form 
of peripheral expression." (Introduction to Neurology (1915), p. 27. Cf. also 
Knight Dunlap, "Thought Content and Feehng," Psy. Rev. 23: 49-70 and his Out- 
line of Psychobiology (1914); as well as E. C. Tolman, "Nerve Process and Cogni- 
tion," Psy. Rev. 25: 423-444 (1918). Thorndike's view is similar. He says the 
observable motor responses "are soon outnumbered by those productive, directly 
and at the time, of only the inner, concealed responses in the neurones themselves to 
which what we call sensations, intellectual attention, images, ideas, judgments, and 
the like, are due." — Educ. Psy. Vol. II, p. 54. 



CHAPTER VIII 

INSTINCTS, APTITUDES AND APPETITES, IN GENERAL 

Development of Theory 

Probably an undue proportion of attention has been given to the 
human instincts, in discussions of motives or social psychology 
written within the last thirty years. A distinct reaction is setting 
in toward emphasis on the plasticity or teachability of human 
nature, which sets us so far apart from the lower animals, — an 
emphasis that was also characteristic of the association psy- 
chology. This newer associationism will be outlined in Chapters 
XI to XIII. 

The prominence given to the instinctive elements in hiunan 
behavior in recent discussions, however, calls for a critical eval- 
uation of them; and indeed there are many points of social theory 
at which our present knowledge of instincts can well be used. 
More extended and definite use, we believe, however, must wait 
on advancement of the psychological theory. The reader is pre- 
sumably interested chiefly in an enumeration of the original human 
impulses, but the problems presented by instincts in general must 
be faced before the value of any given inventory can be appre- 
ciated. 

An historical account of the doctrines of instinct could be fitted 
quite neatly into Comte's theological-metaphysical-positive 
formula, particularly if we looked primarily at the inferences 
drawn from the phenomena of instinct. As to the phenomena 
themselves, and the supposed mechanics of them, there has been 
surprisingly Httle change in theory during the past three or four 
centuries. It has been believed all along that the instincts, both 
of the lower animals and of men, operate by means of cunning 
physiological clock-works, providentially provided, which cause a 
creature to make adaptive and appropriate reactions to the im- 
portant objects in his environment. 



INSTINCTS, APTITUDES AND APPETITES 93 

The main dispute has always been on the extent of such auto- 
matic action ; in other words, as to how much brutes reason and 
how far men are creatures of instinct. Descartes, of course, held 
that the lower animals are complete automata, and such has long 
been the popular view; but philosophers like Buff on, Erasmus 
Darwin, Helvetius and Hume championed animal lovers in their 
conviction that dumb brutes frequently act from reason just as do 
men, and that they have analogous pleasures and pains. "No 
truth," says Hume, "appears to me more evident, than that 
beasts are endow'd with thought and reason as well as men." ^ 
The Scottish philosopher Reid, as we have remarked, gave much 
attention to the human instincts, in the interests of his doctrines 
on intuitions of the moral sense, existence of the external world 
and the like. A follower of his, Thomas Hancock, M.D., pub- 
lished in 1824 a thick volume called An Essay on Instinct and its 
Physical and Moral Relations (London), in which the imperfect 
human reason is contrasted with the wonderfully accurate guid- 
ance of divinely provided instincts; and the existence of a moral 
instinct is inferred. Numerous illustrations of instinctive actions, 
brute and human, are there collected, many of them quoted from 
Reid. Pope's couplet appears on the frontispiece : 

For Reason raise o'er Instinct, as you can; 
In this 'tis God directs, in that 'tis man. 

This contrast between rational or intelligent action, in which 
the agent utilizes the lessons of his past experience and ' puts two 
and two together,' or draws inferences, on the one hand, and blind 
automatic action, stereotyped or uniform for a whole species, 
clearly not learned from experience yet always tending to pre- 
serve the creature and his race, has therefore been a conventional 
topic for some centuries. Comparative psychologists are still far 
from agreed as to the extent of instinct in man and of reason in 
brutes, but careful observation of human phenomena will pro- 
gressively answer the first question, and the light we are getting 
on the relations of learning and reasoning to instincts (which 
will be discussed in following chapters) will help to clear up 
the second. 

' Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Bk. I, pt. iii, sec. 16. 



94 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

The associationist-utilitarian psychologists, it is well known, 
reacted strongly away from the instinctive or ' intuitive ' line of 
explanation of mental phenomena and behavior. Theirs was a 
simple formula of knowledge and action determined by associa- 
tion of sensations. Yet all those writers, as has been shown above, 
did assume some instinctive equipment. The occasion of their 
reaction was plainly in the arbitrary metaphysical and ethical 
principles which the hypothesis of intuitive or instinctive knowl- 
edge had been used to support. James Mill's testy assertion that 
the name Instinct is a mere cloak for ignorance was made apropos 
the supposedly instinctive belief in the external world. The same 
Mill, however, used the substance of the instinct concept to ac- 
count for numerous original unlearned simple reflexes of the body, 
and for the impulsive effects, in opposite directions, of all painful 
and pleasurable sensations. Bentham came nearer to the modern 
position when he admitted benevolence, skill, ambition and 
several others to be ' simple pleasures,' for he was then saying in 
effect that people are impelled to these * pleasures ' for no ulterior 
motive, but simply for their own sweet sakes. John Mill was more 
hospitable to the doctrine of animal instincts, and he admitted 
that the association formula might have to be revised in that 
direction.^ 

Bain is, as usual, half way between James Mill and William 
James. He fully recognized the instincts and appetites as the 
original behavior equipment. He described the appetites of 
hunger, thirst, sex and so on, and he catalogued the instincts into 
(i) simple reflexes, such as breathing, sucking, heart action, (2) 
the mechanisms leading to walking, vocalization and general 
bodily control, and (3) the arrangements for expressing emotions, 
as in laughing, crying and general random motions. The "de- 
structive and constructive" instincts he dismissed as important 
only in the lower animals.^ His work on the emotions was very 
important; ^ many of his classes are the standard ones adopted by 
McDougall. He made original observations of newly-born lambs 

^ Logic, Bk. VI, ch. iv, sec. 4. 

2 A. Bain, The Senses and the Intellect (1855), Bk. I, chs. iii, iv. 

« The Emotions and the Will (1865). 



INSTINCTS, APTITUDES AND APPETITES 95 

to decide questions of instinct, and so rejected the alleged instinct 
of imitation, yet the maternal and other social instincts never 
made much impression on him. He thought they were chiefly 
derived from associations of simple sensuous pleasures, and for 
this doctrine McDougall has frequent occasion to reproach him. 

Mechanisms or Instinct 

When we turn to the more exact characterizations of instinct 
which have resulted from modern researches, we find it agreed 
that the outstanding features are those that were noticed long 
ago. It is an ' untaught ability ' to perform a peculiar course of 
action in a certain definite external situation, which action usually 
promotes the survival of the individual or his species; an ability 
which is somehow transmitted by heredity, not acquired through 
the subject's experience, and whose hereditary nature is attested 
by the similarity of instinctive actions in all members of any 
animal species; and finally, instinctive action is performed, on the 
first occasion at least, without foresight of the utility it will have. 
This similarity within a species is not absolute, there are inborn 
differences of capacity just as there are differences in human nose- 
lengths; the instinct is the general behavior-character, as the nose 
is a general physical character. As Woodworth says, some cats are 
naturally better mousers than others, but all cats are more alike 
in their propensity to hunt mice than the similarity of their rear- 
ing would account for. Besides the various food-getting instincts, 
including sucking in human infants, those of locomotion, shelter- 
building, vocalization, reproduction and care of the young are 
familiar examples. We shall defer the matter of inventory, how- 
ever, until we have inquired further into the general nature of an 
instinct. 

The only rigid test as to whether a given action is really instinc- 
tive is repeated observations of similar and relatively skillful first 
performances by several members of a species, under conditions 
which preclude the possibility of the animals having learned the 
trick by practice or imitation. Such conditions exist when the 
instinct functions directly after birth, or develops spontaneously 
when the animal is reared in isolation. This test can be realized 



96 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

only in a few cases, and so there is still room for scepticism as to 
whether most of the supposed instincts are really transmitted 
through inheritable characters in the nervous system, or are car- 
ried simply by the group * culture,' that is, by the younger mem- 
bers learning ways and technology from the older ones. 

It is further pointed out, moreover, that many of the distinctive 
features of so-called instinctive behavior are due simply to 
peculiarities of the animal's organs, they are the necessary results 
of his gross bodily structures. It is ' instinctive ' to us to build 
houses of a certain size, and for birds to build theirs of another 
size and shape, largely because of the ways our bodies differ in 
size and shape from theirs. Our constructive, and possibly our 
acquisitive, ' instincts ' are clearly somewhat dependent on the 
structure of our hands, — the thumb being opposed to the fingers 
and so capable of grasping. Our language * instincts ' depend 
partly on the structure of our vocal organs; and * natural ability ' 
in music and art clearly is in part a function of the ear and eye. 
A genuine instinct is a matter of inheritable neural connections, 
which determine a specific response; it is not a matter of other 
inherited organs. 

A third objection made to the orthodox theory of instincts is 
that observations in embryology seem to show that no neural 
connections forming reflex circuits are predetermined by heredity; 
the fibers seem to grow out at random, like the roots of a plant, 
and the responses of which a new-born animal is capable are ap- 
parently ' learned ' during its prenatal experiences. On all these 
grounds Professor Holt, for example, in his lectures disputed the 
existence of instincts in the usual sense of the term; and there 
have long been naturalists like A. R. Wallace who believe that the 
precocity in learning of yoimg animals, and the possibilities for 
imitation, will account for all the facts of behavior without the 
assumption of instincts. The rather uncritical exploitation of 
instinct-doctrines by some of Darwin's followers, like Romanes, 
is to be charged in some degree with the reaction. 

So far as imitation or learning after birth is concerned, enough 
trustworthy evidence, of the rigid kind mentioned above, has 
been collected by recent students of animal behavior so that doubt 



INSTINCTS, APTITUDES AND APPETITES 97 

as to the existence of any instincts at all is absurd. To mention 
only a few examples, the flight, pecking and sexual behavior of 
birds have been proved instinctive, solitary insects of many 
species have been foxmd to live the same typical and intricate 
lives when there is absolutely no possibility of imitation, or learn- 
ing through trial and error; and specific typical reactions to 
hereditary prey and enemies by cats, guinea hens and other 
animals have been abundantly demonstrated.^ That a large 
number of other behavior-series are instinctive is rendered prob- 
able by a multitude of less critical observations; but the anecdotes 
of the older naturalists must be accepted cautiously, since the 
writers often underrated the capacity of lower animals for learn- 
ing. 

It was formerly supposed that an instinctive act is performed 
perfectly on the first occasion, but modern students all find the 
first performances crude, though serviceable, and that a gradual 
refinement comes from experience. Chicks, for example, improve • 
the quality of their pecking by practice, but their first pecks and 
their first steps are good enough to keep them alive, and their 
skill improves no faster in the society of their fellows than in 
solitude from birth. On the other hand, as is to be expected, ex- 
periments reveal many decisive social influences. Orioles and 
some other birds, if reared in isolation, develop songs different 
from those usual to their species.^ 

^ J. B. Watson's Behavior, already cited, summarizes in Ch. IV a number of ex- 
perimental studies of instinct, and gives references to these valuable monographs. 
The Journal of Animal Behavior, founded in 191 1, contains a number of the studies: 
see especially articles by Wallace Craig, and Breed and Shepard on instincts of 
chicks and doves in Vols. II and III; by Yerkes on rats, Vol. Ill; by Herrick on 
nest-building in birds. G. W. and Elizabeth Peckham's Wasps, Social and Solitary 
and Carveth Read's "Instinct, Especially in Solitary Wasps," British Jour, of Psy., 
Vol. IV (1911) are excellent studies, more scientific, we suppose, than those of Henri 
Fabre. Jaques Loeb, in Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative 
Psychology (1900) gives corroborative observations of his own on wasps, and 
numerous other personal studies of instincts. C. Lloyd Morgan's works Habit and 
Instinct (1898?) and Instinct and Experience (1912), and Hobhouse's Mind in 
Evolution (ist edition, 1901), contain valuable and interesting evidence and theory, 
but the technique does not guard against misinterpretations as does that of the 
students first-mentioned. 

2 As to the chicks, see Breed and Shepard, op. cit. Experiments by Scott and 
Conradi on songs of birds are summarized by Watson, op. cit. 



98 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

The two other objections to any mstinct-theory, mentioned 
above, take us into the physiological realm, and it is well for other 
reasons that we should try to get our bearings there. It would be 
possible, for purposes of social science, to consider the instinctive 
and other elements of motives, wholly in terms of the gross be- 
havior such as we have mentioned, and of the ' emotional con- 
sciousness ' presumed to accompany it. That has been the usual 
practice, as in McDougall's work. We do not propose to neglect 
either of these groups of data, but since our chief problem is to 
find how ' instinct,' ' experience,' ' habit,' ' pleasure and pain ' 
and ' the reason,' all interact and cooperate to shape our adult 
motives, it is necessary to get these elements onto a common 
plane, or reduced to a common denominator. That common 
denominator, according to the present trend of psychology, is the 
nervous system.^ 

The first peck of the chick, or first suck or sneeze of the infant, 
seems a simple act by comparison with the elaborate ones of 
which adults are capable, but as Spencer pointed out long ago, 
all these instinctive acts imply a multitude of preformed reflex 
circuits, coordinating the animal's movements with numerous 
stimuli of light, odor, touch and so on. 

Spencer accordingly defined instinct as ' compound reflex ac- 
tion,' ^ carried out by means of inherited neural mechanisms. By 
William James' time the physiological evidence made this view 
still more plausible, and so James adopted it and stated it in his 
usual vivid style. We must not suppose, he says, that the cat, in 

^ Graham Wallas in The Great Society (1914) has recognized this necessity (see 
Ch. II), and his common denominator is the "disposition." He argues that, since 
all these elements are obviously founded on inherited bodily structures, it is fair to 
consider them all in some sort instinctive. We hope to push the physiological 
analysis further than he was then able, and consequently to show more completely 
the mechanics of their interaction. 

It is not proposed, of course, that the social scientist should always carry on his 
treatment of psychological forces in terms of reflex circuits or neurons, any more 
than people should always speak of eating in terms of calories. But still matters of 
diet can hardly be scientifically discussed without some comprehension of the 
calories and chemical elements; and so also, the larger elements of behavior can be 
more discriminatingly handled with some grasp of how they are composed of re- 
flexes, than without it. 

2 Principles of Psychology, Pt. IV, ch. v (1865). 



INSTINCTS, APTITUDES AND APPETITES 99 

pursuing the mouse or running from the dog, has any notion of 
life, or death, or of self and preservation. He is just born with a 
nervous system so constructed that when the moving object we 
call a mouse appears in his field of vision, he must pursue it, and 
when the object giving a different pattern of stimuli, which we 
call a dog, appears, he must run away if there is enough space. 
The acts are as fatal as sneezing, or the knee-jerk, and are corre- 
lated as exactly with their special excitants. 

This view, he goes on, implies a vast number of preformed 
locks, so to speak, to which the outer stimuli are keys, but so also 
"each nook and cranny of creation, down to our very skin and en- 
trails, has its living inhabitants, with organs suited to the place, 
to devour and digest the food it harbors and to meet the dangers 
it conceals." The instincts are simply one case of the adaptive- 
ness of structure to environment which is shown throughout the 
animal creation. The older writings, with their pervading vague 
wonder at the clairvoyant and prophetic power of instinct and at 
the beneficence of God in providing it, says James, are a waste of 
words. "God's beneficence endows them, first of all, with a 
nervous system : and turning our attention to this makes instinct 
immediately appear neither more nor less wonderful than all the 
other facts of life." ^ 

The above broad outlines of the physiology of instinct are still 
generally accepted. It should be remarked that the number ot 
such organized reflexes has no relation to the total number of 
neurons in the body, as one element may be used in several differ- 
ent response-patterns. The central connections are so arranged, 
however, that certain combinations of stimuli will give rise to de- 
finite response. 

Discussion of the metaphysical or religious implications of in- 
stinct and reason is not yet past, as is evidenced by the works of 
H. R. Marshall,^ Hocking and others; but the origin of the in- 
stincts we all now refer to natural selection, in accordance with 
the general theory of biological evolution. Viewed in this light, 
the relatively great utiHty of the instincts in preserving the lives 

^ Briefer Course, pp. 391 ff. Principles of Psychology, Vol. II, ch. xxiv. 
2 Instinct and Reason, New York, 1898. 



lOO ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

of their possessors does not have quite the fascination it had for 
our fathers, because we know that this adaptiveness has behind it 
a red trail of extinguished lives, whose behavior variations proved 
non-adaptive. Only those creatures whose variations were useful 
became the founders of species, and probably every species has 
always possessed some instincts which were maladaptive. 

Some sceptics regarding instincts, as we have said, consider 
inheritance of a peculiar kind of behavior unplausible. "How can 
fear hatch out of an egg?" ^ But to most students of the subject 
there is nothing more mysterious about hereditary determination 
of some central nerve connections, than about hereditary deter- 
mination of the joints of the spine or hand. The exact mechanisms 
of both processes are about equally obscure, and so, although the 
neurons in their earUer stages appear to grow in no more definite 
directions than the roots of a tree, we must infer from the sim- 
ilarities of behavior in successive generations, when the factors of 
imitation and determination by physical structure have been 
allowed for, that their course must be predetermined sufiiciently 
to provide mechanisms for instincts.^ 

The remaining objection, that instincts are learned through 
prenatal ' experience ' — the process at this stage is really of the 
same fundamental nature as that of habit-formation or learning 
— may be relevant for some of the simpler reflexes connected with 
grasping by the fingers and flexing the limbs, but there remain a 
host of responses like sucking, swallowing, crying, not to mention 
the more complex ones, which overtax the nurture explanation. 

For most sociological purposes, to be sure (not for biological or 
physiological), such experience as a child receives in the gestation 
period is so far beyond human control that it may be considered a 

1 E. g., H. E, Walter, Genetics. 

2 Watson, op. cit., Ch. V, discusses the problem of hereditary apparatus, and 
cites some experimental work on the embryos of lower animals which tends to show 
that the neural connections constituting the reflex circuits of instincts are regular 
hereditary characters. There are some slight references to the question in the stand- 
ard works on heredity by Castle, Davenport, and T. H. Morgan, which indicate 
that they consider instincts hereditary according to the same principles as govern 
the other tissues. Davenport is rather extreme in the large scope he allows to heredi- 
tary mental peculiarities. 



INSTINCTS, APTITUDES AND APPETITES lOI 

matter of heredity.^ The same may be said of those pseudo- 
instmcts which are simply the necessary results of a particular 
gross bodily structure. So far as we are usually concerned, the 
important thing about an instinct, as about any natural bodily 
character, is that it will inevitably reappear generation after 
generation, regardless of acquired modifications in particular 
parents; and usually also, there are some limits within which it 
can be altered in one generation by training. The difference be- 
tween what is inherited (including the prenatal experiences) 
and what is acquired, has the same general kind of importance, 
whether it concerns the selfishness of a man or the speed of a ' 
race horse. The instinctive and other physiological endowments 
of any species, including man, will, on biological principles, re- 
main constant through many generations, although ' mutations ' 
do occur somehow which lead to evolution. The similar external 
nurtural influences, as climate, flora and fauna, and customs, 
which may give rise, generation after generation, to similar be- 
havior, are, however, modifiable in a different manner, and so 
such pseudo-instincts should be distinguished as sharply as pos- 
sible from biological instincts. 

The foregoing discussion leads us to consider here a peculiar 
kind of native or inheritable behavior-equipment, which we may 
call aptitudes, or, with Woodworth, ' native capacities.' We refer, 
of course, to any bent or adaptability for training, or ' interest,' in 
a certain line of activity. Some dogs can more easily be taught to 
stand on their hind legs than others; we speak of ' mechanically- 
minded,' or ' musically-gifted ' people. We shall develop this mat- 
ter further in the following chapter, but let us now point out the 
relation of this concept to that of instinct. An instinct, according 
to the best scientific usage today, is a specific response, or com- 
bination of reflexes. An aptitude, on the other hand, is much 
more general; it merely refers to some limitation in the range of 
learning, some direction in adaptability. 

^ In some experiments described in "On egg-structure and the heredity of in- 
stincts," Monist, Vol. VIII (1897), Loeb showed that some instincts of protozoans 
are much distorted if the eggs are not left to develop in their native sea water, as the 
physico-chemical peculiarities of the latter help to determine the structure of the 
mature organism. 



I02 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

Physiologically it may be conceived in two ways, which are 
probably supplementary. The person gifted in any given line 
probably has effector-organs — ear, eye, throat, hands, etc. — 
specially well suited for this particular behavior, as a race horse 
must have strength and wind. But aptitude seems also to imply 
especially favorable neural dispositions which make learning easy 
and attractive in a particular field. There may even be a true 
instinctive nucleus, i. e., an innate system of reflexes, which are 
' incomplete ' from the point of view of a first practical per- 
formance, but which are easily completed by habits. It must be 
remembered that all instincts are soon supplemented and overlaid 
by habit-mechanisms (that is, other reflexes become connected 
with them) ; and it seems that the instincts do predetermine the 
range of learning in certain directions, for example, as to eating, 
mating, etc., even though there are many options left to individual 
experience. 

Evolutionary Scale of Innate Responses 

It is also useful in the study of motives to have a view of 
the ascending scale of innate responses; to look at the matter 
genetically. 

The simplest organisms, plant and animal, have these hered- 
itary forms of response to various features of the environment 
which enable them to get food and other necessities.^ In animals, 
locomotion toward food and away from harm are among the 
most important reactions. In the lowest creatures, many of them 
being single-celled, these stereotyped responses are called tro- 
pisms, from the Greek word meaning to turn. Tropisms are 
classified according to the stimulus which excites them to action, 
— light (helio- or phototropism) , heat, gravity, chemical action, 
touch and others. They are identical in principle with the reflex 
circuit, except that there are no separate nerve-cells involved, 
but only partially specialized tracts within the organism's one 
cell.2 

^ Charles Darwin did some pioneer work on the apparatus for guiding roots and 
stems, which is given in his book The Power of Movement in Plants. 

'^ It seems to us confusing to apply the term tropism to responses of the higher 
animals, as reflex and instinct will answer the purpose there. Loeb, however, uses it 



INSTINCTS, APTITUDES AND APPETITES IO3 

Now the lowest organisms known have tropisms adjusted to 
more than one stimulus, so that the behavior of any living crea- 
ture is determined by several ' motives,' acting now in one direc- 
tion, now in another, and frequently simultaneously to produce a 
resultant course. Ordinarily it moves directly toward the source 
of one of the above-mentioned stimuli, if the stimulation is not 
too strong, by means of the simultaneous operation of two loco- 
motor circuits, — one for each side. So long as only one of the 
sense-organs is stimulated, say by light, only the locomotor organ 
on the opposite side will move, and the body is slewed around to 
' face ' the light. Then presently both sense-organs are simultane- 
ously stimulated, both locomotor organs respond, and the or- 
ganism moves in a straight line toward the source of light. This 
bilateral symmetry, characteristic of the lowest orders of response 
apparatus, and directing the response toward an object, has left its 
impress on almost the whole animal kingdom. Nearly all animals 
have double sets of effectors, on right and left sides. But the 
creature has also other tropisms, say one which makes it avoid too 
strong a light or a few of its other dangers and obstructions, and 
another for enveloping the food when it is reached, etc. The re- 
actions of the protozoa are so limited in number that an investiga- 
tor who studies the behavior of one species can finally predict 
fairly well what its response will be to a certain set of stimuli. He 
cannot tell perfectly, however, for the response in all animals 
varies from time to time according to inner physiological condi- 
tions which cannot be directly observed. 

As we go ' up ' the evolutionary scale, we find a larger and 
larger equipment of reactions to more and more features of the 
environment, made possible by the acquisition of a bundle of 
specialized nerve-fibers which have numerous interconnections. 

in the more general sense. Some standard works on the evolutionary series of 
tropisms and instincts are H. S. Jennings, Behavior of the Lower Organisms (1906); 
J. Loeb, Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology (1900), 
— this is partly superseded by his later works, The Organism as a Whole (191 6) and 
Forced Movements, Tropisms and Animal Conduct (1918); S. J. Holmes, Evolution 
of Animal Intelligence (191 1), Studies in Animal Behavior (1916). The excellent 
philosophical work of L. T. Hobhouse, Mind in Evolution (1901, 1915) is well 
known. A useful sumanary is in M. Parmelee, The Science of Human Behavior 
(1913)- 



I04 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

With the development of a nervous system, that is to say, the 
simple reflexes can be combined and recombined into units of 
higher and higher orders. The nervous system has an integrative 
function, it enables a limited number of elementary reactions to be 
used for a larger number of purposes, just as the grasping of our 
hand — simple in itself — enters into so many different kinds of 
acts. The combinations of reflexes which are inheritable are the 
instincts. Those which are acquired from individual experience 
are habits; the acquisition of habits, as we shall see in the next 
chapter, is learning. 

We may notice here, though we shall return to it, the point so 
admirably developed by Professor Holt, namely, the recession of 
the immediate stimulus as the key to the organism's behavior.^ 
If the animal has only two locomotive circuits, set to be activated 
by light, his behavior is wholly a function of the source of light. 
What he is doing is moving toward the light. But if he has an- 
other tropism which makes him avoid heat, then when he ap- 
proaches the source of Ught his behavior will be a function neither 
of the position of that source, nor of its heat, taken singly, but of 
the total situation. The key to his behavior is in the imreal or 
ideal object upon which his separate responses converge, — the 
point in his path toward the Hght where his heat-avoiding reaction 
will become stimulated. And that is the case in all complex con- 
duct. It is, presumably, ultimately reducible to reflexes; but 
their involved interplay disguises them to common-sense observa- 
tion, and the one object of which the behavior as a whole is a 
function becomes an ideal and perhaps non-existent focal point, 
— for instance, the gold which it is hoped may be in the unworked 
mine, or the love of God which one hopes to merit. 

Mechanisms of Appetites — ' Persistence ' 

If we examine the phenomena of instinct at further length, we 
shall find certain complications which seem to upset the above 
simple theory. We find, for instance, that some instincts become 
operative only some months or years after the animal's birth, 
while others regularly disappear after a period of activity; and 

' The Freudian Wish, especially Ch. II. 



INSTINCTS, APTITUDES AND APPETITES 105 

further that all instincts are somewhat variable in action. A 
given stimulus does not always produce identical responses in the 
same animal. Sometimes a dog, for reasons of his own, will refuse 
to stir after a rabbit or a fleeing cat. But the worst obstacle of all 
to the reflex-theory is the indefinite but persistent striving which 
instincts so frequently manifest, the refusal of the animal to quit 
imtil a number of expedients have been tried or the * natural ' end 
achieved. A dog hunting a lost trail, a mouse escaping from a cat, 
a cat trying to open a puzzle-box to secure food, all exemplify 
this resourcefulness which, according to some psychologists, char- 
acterizes all instincts. McDougall, for example, refuses to be 
content with the merely mechanical reflex formula, for, he says, 

All instinctive behavior exhibits that unique mark of mental process, a 
persistent striving towards the natural end of the process. That is to say, the 
process, unlike any merely mechanical process, is not to be arrested by any 
sufficient mechanical obstacle, but is rather intensified by any such obstacle 
and only comes to an end either when its appropriate goal is achieved, or 
when some stronger incompatible tendency is excited, or when the creature is 
exhausted by its persistent efforts.^ 

Yet if we can get a more definite idea of how the simple, fatal 
reactions or chains of reflexes become integrated so as to provide 
for flexibility and adaptability of behavior, we shall have a more 
comprehensive and more practically useful understanding of in- 
stinct than if we content ourselves with invoking a magic ' cona- 
tive striving,' which is supposed to be essential to any simple 
instinct, and by pointing to our own consciousness in apparently 
similar situations. These generalities attribute a pseudo-sim- 
plicity to the instincts, and they oversimplify the larger human 
endeavors still more. 

The compHcations mentioned are less formidable to our theory 
when we consider (besides the variability in behavior which is to 
be expected when opposing instincts are excited by their appro- 
priate stimuli nearly at the same time) the variations in stores of 
energy in the cell-tracts at different times, as well as other dif- 
ferences in the inner physiological state. The hungry dog's total 
stimulation in the presence of a rabbit is very different from that 

^ Social Psychology (1909), p. 27, Ch. I. 



I06 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

of a replete dog, and so on. There is no question that various 
substances and secretions within the body are continually stimu- 
lating inner sensory nerves, thereby contributing to the or- 
ganism's total behavior. Breathing, for instance, varies with the 
composition of the blood as regards oxygen and carbon; and 
clearly the sexual secretions have a decided influence on the gen- 
eral activity, so that an identical external stimulus will at one 
time be effective and at another, not. Hunger and thirst are 
inner conditions which involve chemical and mechanical stimuli, 
and it is probable that excess or deficiency of muscular cell nour- 
ishment gives chemical stimuli toward bodily activity (exercise) 
or toward repose. 

The changes in nervous structure which underlie the growth 
and subsidence of instincts are evidently to be accounted for 
along the same lines as similar phenomena in the grosser bodily 
structures, such as the beard and two sets of teeth, and it is be- 
lieved by physiologists that chemical secretions poured by certain 
glands into the blood have a large share in these regulations of 
bodily growth.^ 

On the other hand, the ' physiological state ' which contributes 
to behavior may not be a matter of inner stimuli; it may be noth- 
ing more than temporary insolvency of certain neurons or muscles, 
so that a reaction for which the connections had been best estab- 
lished is temporarily ' out of order.' 

This line of explanation of the appetites of hunger, thirst, oxy- 
gen, sex, exercise and repose, and the fact of differing states of 
efficiency among various reactions at one time, supplement the 
compound reflex theory of instinct so that the whole becomes 
reasonably adequate for the facts.^ An appetite, as of hunger, 
arises and persists through the continued inner stimulations; 
there are also instinctive responses connected with these prompt- 
ings and with stimuli from the outer situation which lead to 
pecuHar ways of satisfying the appetite, i. e., the food-getting, 

1 Loeb, op. ciL; Herrick, op. cit., pp. iii, 249. 

^ The above account of the appetites was derived chiefly from lectures by Pro- 
fessor E. B. Holt. Watson's discussion of the organic sense (Psychol, pp. 64-66, is 
to the same effect. Cf. Woodworth, op. cit., Ch. V, and Herrick, Introduction to 
Neurology (1915), Ch. XVII. 



INSTINCTS, APTITUDES AND APPETITES 107 

sexual instincts, and so on. The periodicity of these appetites is 
explained by the functional round of nutrition and expenditure of 
energy by the body, and is connected also with the natural cycles 
of day and night, summer and winter. The continued ' striving ' 
of an instinctive process is then to be attributed to the contin- 
uance of stimulations, which keep inciting the creature to activity 
until the stimulus is removed, — ■ by ingestion of food or other- 
wise. The stimulations of fear naturally continue so long as there 
are any indications of the feared object, and the pangs of hunger 
persist until the stomach is lEilled. The response first tried is the 
ordinary instinctive one, that is, the one for which the hereditary 
neural connections are most favorable. But when this response 
fails to stop the current of stimuli, the depletion of energy through 
this particular chain of reflexes will cause the incoming neural 
currents (which may now be through different sense-organs, 
from other aspects of the external situation) to be diverted to 
other instinctive or habitual responses, or they may break 
through wholly new connections and thus cause a ' random ' 
movement. Thus we can account for the variability of instinctive 
action wholly on mechanistic principles, and at the same time, as 
will appear in the next chapter, have made a long start on the 
explanation of learning and intelligent action.^ 

The moral for social scientists of all this physiologizing, is that 
the instincts are not, as McDougall and many others would lead 
us to believe, all homogeneous lumps, differing from each other 
only in their emotions and gross bodily expressions, but are 
varying blends of numerous mechanisms. The ' striving ' of each 
one, therefore, is due to a mechanism in some degree peculiar to 
itself, and only by knowing something of this individual mechan- 
ism can we consider intelligently such problems as the ' balking ' 
of the ' instinct of workmanship,' the ' repression ' of the ' sexual 
instinct,' or the possible ' sublimation ' of the ' instinct of pugnac- 
ity.' Physiological analysis, we believe, is the only way to squeeze 
the magic out of the concept of instinct. 

^ See Woodworth, op. cit., Ch. V, especially sections on "multiple possibilities of 
reaction," and "advantage possessed by one alternative reaction over the others." 
His account is similar to ours but is vague in many places because he uses so much 
introspective data. He assumes, for instance, that when a reaction results in "pain," 
there is no need of accounting further for the shift to another response. 



I08 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

Let us keep in mind, then, these important classes of behavior- 
mechanisms, all of which are relatively stable through generations 
of any race, and all of which have been confused with * instinct ^ 
in the social sciences. An instinct is a specific response provided 
by a complete, hereditary system of reflexes, which core, soon 
after birth, begins to acquire supplementary reflexes based on the 
individual environment. In addition to such hereditary neural 
connections, much similarity and also much variability of be- 
havior is provided by other hereditary bodily characters, such as the 
thumb, or the glands, etc., which furnish the stimulations of ap- 
petite. Then there is the general aptitude, which apparently is 
given direction by both instinctive and other organic bases, but 
which as a whole always includes some learned, or acquired, and 
therefore variable, reflexes. All the foregoing are predominantly 
hereditary characters, and all are to be sharply distinguished from 
that stable mode of behavior which is the result of uniform exter- 
nal conditions in which learning takes place, such as landscape, 
companions, social customs and culture. These conditions are 
usually more amenable to deliberate social control than are the 
hereditary characters. Generalizations may be made about each 
of these stable modes, and useful ones, but we must beware of 
predicating of all what is true of only some. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE HUMAN INSTINCTS AND APTITUDES 

Inventory of Human Instincts 

We may now proceed with the topic which would have seemed to 
be the only one connected with instincts that could be important 
to us, — namely, the inventory of human instincts. McDougall's 
list (1908) must be noticed, as it has been the most influential of 
recent years. It is based considerably on the older lists of Preyer, 
Schneider, James, Sutherland, Baldwin and others. McDougall 
believes there are seven human instincts of fundamental impor- 
tance in social life, and that the activity of each is attended by a 
pecuhar primary emotion, as follows: 

Instinct corresponding emotion 

Flight Fear 

Repulsion Disgust 

Curiosity Wonder 

Pugnacity Anger 

Self-abasement (subjection) Subjection, negative self-feeling 

SeK-assertion (display) Elation, positive self-feeling 

Parental Tender emotion 

Other true instincts, according to him, which are less important 
for society, are sex or reproduction, gregariousness, acquisition or 
ownership, constructiveness or contrivance, hunger, and " a 
number of minor instincts, such as those that prompt to crawling 
and walking." ^ The tendency to habit-formation and a con- 
sequent preference of the familiar to the unfamiliar thing, and the 
prolonging effect of pleasure on action and the inhibiting effect of 
pain, are also considered primary and ultimate psychological 
facts, and therefore somewhat of the nature of instincts. 

He holds that pleasure-pain theories of action are shallow and 
libelous to hiunan nature; that the instincts are the prime movers 
in all action, frequently over-riding pleasure and pain. But 

» Op. ciL, Ch. m. 



I lO ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

pleasure and pain, it is hinted, are of great efficacy in learning, in 
grafting habits onto the instincts so that the latter may function 
efficiently in the subject's pecuHar environment.^ 

This list has much in common with that which we shall pres- 
ently sponsor, but McDougall's concept of an instinct — say 
that of ' flight ' — as a lump, exercising quasi-intelligence in deal- 
ing with the situation before it, is considered a misleading over- 
simplification, as we have shown. We therefore follow the practice 
of Thorndike, Woodworth and Watson in speaking rather of 
groups of human instincts. The specific responses to definite 
stimuli (internal or external), are necessarily very numerous, for 
learned responses are supposed to be only new combinations 
of preexisting reflex elements; consequently for convenience of 
treatment it is necessary to group the instincts, so far as they can 
be recognized, into classes having similar stimuH, or having re- 
sponses giving the same general effect. 

Present-day experimental psychologists are loath to generalize 
about such a gross entity as ' the instinct ' of ' curiosity,' etc., 
until they learn more exactly what are the stimuli and responses 
which are to be headed instinctive curiosity. They speak, there- 
fore, of the groups of responses which may be called instinctive 
curiosity, or which result in food-getting, defense, and so on.^ 
Then the inclusion of any given activity in the major groups de- 

1 Op. ciL, Ch. I, p. 43; Ch. II; Ch. VII. 

2 "Those who, like McDougall, attempt to trace all motive force to the instincts, 
would regard such acts as driven by the native impulses of curiosity and manipula- 
tion; but in so doing they miss the point. There is not an undifferentiated reservoir 
of motive force, to be called curiosity, that can be led off into one or another act of 
perception; but curiosity is simply a collective name for an indefinite number of im- 
pulses, each of which is dependent on the existence of some degree of ability to per- 
ceive and understand a certain object. The child shows curiosity first with regard 
to bright lights and sharp contrasts, which are the natural stimuli for his eye move- 
ments; later, after he has learned to some extent to know persons and things, his 
curiosity is directed towards them; and when he has begun to perceive the relations 
of things, he shows curiosity regarding these relations." — Woodworth, op. ciL, 
p. 103. 

The same objection appHes in greater degree to most members of the Freudian 
school, as their instincts are "undifferentiated reservou-s of motive force" par ex- 
cellence. 

The criticism, it is true, is from the point of view that the physico-chemical 
series in the body is not interrupted by ' the mind,' and that physiological explana- 



THE HUMAN INSTINCTS AND APTITUDES III 

pends on the accuracy of observations which have been made in 
respect to it, rather than on the general question whether there is 
an instinct of such and such. 

The criteria by which true instincts are to be recognized have 
been indicated. Proved first performances by numerous members 
of a species (at birth or with the possibiHty of learning otherwise 
precluded), of a similar response to similar situations, the re- 
sponse being skillful and adaptive enough on the first occasion so 
that it cannot be considered a random effort, — these specifica- 
tions are necessary to the most satisfactory test. The first per- 
formance may be possible only some months or years after birth, 
because instincts mature in that manner, as do teeth, hair, etc. 

By tests of this nature students of animal behavior have given 
us our most reliable knowledge of what animal instincts actually 
do exist, but of course they can be only crudely applied to human 
beings. Watson has recently directed experiments with a number 
of infants in a maternity ward, which give pretty satisfactory 
evidence of the instincts then mature,^ but which (naturally) 
shed no light on instincts which may mature at later periods. 
Continued observations of a few growing children have been 
recorded and are used by Thorndike in The Original Nature of 
Man (1913). Such evidence is likely, however, to be vitiated by 
prepossession in the observer; which leads to his overlooking im- 
portant possibilities of learning. 

We must have some recourse, then, to uncertain and inconclu- 
sive criteria. Woodworth, a critic of the first order, says: 

Where the members of a species or other natural group are either more 
aUke or more different in any respect than can be accounted for by their in- 
dividual experience, we have reason to believe that the likeness or difference 
in their traits is due to the native factor.^ 

tions are the most fundamental. It is open to anyone to take the view of inter- 
actionism, in which case he may as well give his psychic powers plenty to do and so 
lighten his labors in physiology. 

^ Resumed in his Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist (1919). Two 
of the studies are reported by Watson and Morgan, "Emotional Reactions and 
Psychological Experimentation," Am. Jour. Psy., 28: 163-174 (1917); and M. B. 
Blanton, "The Behavior of the Human Infant during the First Thirty Days of 
Life," Psy. Rev., 24: 456-483 (1917). 

2 Op. cit., p. 45. 



112 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

The crucial thing is to judge whether experience can account for 
such similarity or difference. If we find a way of acting, say as to 
providing habitations, common to all known races of men, we are 
still not justified in calling it instinctive vuiless we can rule out 
(i) Similar environmental and structural influences, and (2) Pos- 
sibility of intercourse between societies, and thus the influence of 
imitation, or culture. 

Similarly, McDougall's tests, the existence of analogous tend- 
encies in other higher animals, and exaggerated or abnormal 
instances among men,^ must be used, but with great caution. 
WiUiam James assumed that man has inherited most of the pre- 
human instincts, but Watson properly replies that animals which 
have the most complete instinctive equipment, for example, the 
insects, have the least capacity for learning; and those with 
largest learning capacity seem to have fewest instincts. Instinct 
and learning power, he says, are present in any animal in inverse 
ratio.^ The instincts of lower animals, many of which are abun- 
dantly attested,^ may suggest hypothetical human instincts, but 
more evidence must be looked for. 

Beginning with instincts proper (specific responses), the best 
authenticated major groups in men, arranged roughly in simple- 
to-complex order, are as follows (the list is almost the same as 
Woodworth's, Ch. Ill): 

1. Inner reflexes 

2. Muscular coordinations or bodily control 

3. Locomotion 

4. Vocalization — language 

5. Food-getting 

6. Defense — fear 

7. Offence — pugnacity or rage 

8. Exploration with eyes and manipulation — * curiosity,' ' contriv- 
ance,' ' novelty ' 

9. Sexual 

10. Parental 

11. Gregarious 

12. Responses to social approval and disapproval 

13. Other emotional reactions 

14. Other positive and negative responses 

1 Op. cit., p. 49 (Ch. II). * Psychology, p. 254. 

2 An extended Ust, critically assembled, is in Watson's Behavior (1914), Ch. IV. 



TEE HUMAN INSTINCTS AND APTITUDES II3 

The distinctions are rather arbitrary and illogical; several 
groups might be condensed, as defense and offence, gregarious- 
ness and responses to social approval and disapproval. Some, 
moreover, as the parental, gregarious and social, are stiU doubt- 
ful, and much further evidence is required before we can un- 
hesitatingly assert that there are such instincts. Finally, some 
classes are involved in others; "emotional reactions" are partly 
included in inner reflexes, "muscular coordinations" are used in 
all the subsequent groups; ^ and nearly all responses might be 
classed as positive or negative. But on the whole, such a list 
appears to be the most convenient. 

To explain and defend it in greater detail: 

The inner reflexes are those of the heart, lungs, stomach, other 
parts of the circulatory and alimentary systems, glandular reac- 
tions, and doubtless still others, — unquestionably a very great 
number in all. The appetites of oxygen, exercise and repose are 
provided for by some of these innate mechanisms. Appetite, as 
we use the term, refers to a reaction involving inner stimuli which 
recur regularly because of physiological cycles. These stimuli set 
the corresponding instincts in motion. 

By muscular coordinations or bodily control is meant those 
mechanisms providing for flexing and extending the limbs, lips, 
tongue, moving the head, moving and focusing the eyes, the 
grasping reflex of the hands, upon which much experimental work 
has been done, the patellar reflex, the Babinski reflex, and so on. 
All authorities are agreed that these reactions are due to iimate 
neural adjustments, though objection might fairly be made to 
classing them with the instincts, — instincts being considered 
complex combinations of reflexes. We list them so that they will 
not be lost sight of, and also because many if not all of them are 
complexes of simple reflexes. As has been mentioned, the simple 

' On tlxis foundation Hocking (Human Nature and Its Remaking) erects a con- 
siderable metaphysical superstructure, — a hierarchy of human instincts, cul- 
minating in "the will to power." The situation is paralleled, however, by many 
mechanical contrivances which use the same minor apparatuses in different opera- 
tions, like an adding machine. Its explanation does not necessarily require a 
ghostly guiding hand. 



1 14 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

reflex is supposed to be an abstraction, not existing in isolation 
from larger responses.^ 

Instinctive locomotion apparatus is complex and well-developed 
in the lower animals, and by analogy James and his followers 
have believed that the human infant crawls, walks, climbs, more 
by instinct than by learning. It is doubtful. Probably we have 
here an aptitude for acquiring locomotion habits. Watson records 
experiments with several infants to determine if crawling is 
instinctive, and says the results are inconclusive (Psychology, 
p. 248). 

Vocalization instincts are unmistakable ; and these illustrate the 
successive appearance or ' ripening ' of the native responses. 
After several months in which crying is the only vocal response, 
the infant begins to coo; presently it is saying " Ah-goo," or "Ah- 
boo"; "Mam-mam," "Ba-ba," "Da-da." These are the be- 
ginnings toward the vastly complex language habits which are a 
distinguishing mark of the human species. 

The food-getting responses include moving the head to catch the 
nipple, sucking, swallowing, chewing, spitting out bitter sub- 
stances, crying when stimulated by the appetites of hunger and 
thirst. Movements of the arms and hands to put things into the 
mouth should doubtless be included ; and possibly there is a slight 
instinctive bent at later ages toward hunting wild game, or to- 
ward other fairly definite food-seeking behavior.^ 

The defense responses are various. Coughing, sneezing, blink- 
ing, crying, resistance to falling, are of this type, as well as jerking 
away from painful stimuli such as pinches, pricks, or burns. The 
native fear-reactions, recently studied discriminatingly by Wat- 
son and Morgan, may be put into this class broadly speaking. 
The stimuli to original fear, as distinguished from pain-reactions, 
appear to be only loud noises or the subject's falling for lack of 

' Woodworth {op. cit. , p. 47) adds that native equipment includes the use of the 
sense-organs, in seeing, seeing red, etc. This category appears to us redundant, 
since every sensation is presumably correlated with some reflex. (See above, Ch. 
VII.) 

^ See Watson, Psychology, pp. 2383., for recent experimental work, including 
that of Mrs. Blanton, which is also described in Psy. Rev., 24: 456-483. Watson 
doubts the hunting instinct (p. 254), which James and Thorndike had endorsed 
(Thorndike, op. cit., pp. 50-56). 



THE HUMAN INSTINCTS AND APTITUDES II5 

support; the responses are "a sudden catching of the breath, 
clutching randomly with the hands (the grasping reflex invariably- 
appearing when the child is dropped), sudden closing of the eye- 
lids, puckering of the lips, then crying; in older children possibly 
flight and hiding (not yet observed by us as ' original ' reac- 
tions)." ^ It is worthy of remark that contact with a variety 
of lower animals, or bright flashes of light, brought no signs of 
fear. 

Watson suggests that in fear or in any other strong emotion, 
the final stage of behavior when stimulation becomes sufiiciently 
strong, is paralysis, or what we call in animals the ' death feint.' 
One recalls James' anecdote of his instinctive fainting at the 
sight of blood. These and the reactions of aversion which Mc- 
Dougall ascribes to an instinct of disgust or repulsion will fall 
sufiiciently well into the large class of innate defense mechanisms. 
We learn very early indeed to fear and avoid objects which were 
not originally feared, but that is another story. For example, a 
baby has no instinctive fear of the danger of falling, and will 
blithely launch himself off any elevated support; whereas the 
sight of a yawning chasm before the experienced adult is a fright- 
ful object. 

There are also numerous internal reactions connected with 
fear, to which we shall recur in our discussion of the emotions. 

The instinctive responses characteristic of rage, anger, pugnac- 
ity are arbitrarily classed as offensive, although the general effect 
of them, too, is to ward off interference with the subject's own 
activities. The experiments described by Watson indicate that 
the only definite stimulus to such reactions, in the first few 
months of human Hfe, is any hampering of the infant's move- 
ments. If the face or head is held, crying results, quickly followed 
by screaming. The body stiffens and fairly well-coordinated 
slashing or striking movements of the hands and arms result; the 
feet and legs are drawn up and down; the breath is held until the 
child's face is flushed. In older children the slashing movements 
of the arms and legs are better coordinated, and appear as kicking, 

^ Watson, Psychology, p. 200. Taken from Watson and Morgan's report. See 
Ibid., p. 242, on defense movements. 



Il6 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

slapping, pushing, etc. These reactions continue imtil the irritat- 
ing situation is relieved, and sometimes do not cease then.^ Hold- 
ing the arms tightly to the sides has the same result. The stimulus 
should probably be broadened to include lack of satisfaction of an 
appetite. The writer has observed that whenever a certain baby 
of three or four months awakened hungry, its first responses were 
subdued crying and waving of the arms, which were soon followed 
by vigorous kicks of the legs and ' angrier ' cries. 

There are here also important internal reactions, which will be 
treated under emotions. Biting is very likely instinctive in such 
situations, at later ages. Throughout life a substantial core of 
rage-responses are aroused by any thwarting of the agent's ac- 
tivities, although, like all other behavior-series, they are con- 
tinually regrouped by learning. The attitude of ' picking a 
fight,' common among boys, is probably sophisticated, being 
based on experience of the thrills of successful combats which 
were undertaken first at the stimulus of outside interference. The 
' offensive ' behavior manifested in the lower animals toward 
their natural prey, must, of course, be distinguished from rage 
or anger. It is simply part of their food-getting instincts. 

Visual exploration and manipulation appear to be the instinc- 
tive kernels to ' curiosity,' ' contrivance ' or ' workmanship,' and 
' desire for novelty.' The new-born baby is able to move both 
eyes coordinately to fixate on a light,^ and in a few months is 
actively turning its head as well, in the direction from which 
sounds come. At six months or so it begins to reach for any ob- 
ject of suitable size, to grasp it, to pass it from hand to hand, 
probably putting the object in its mouth. When the child can 
crawl its journeys are toward objects which have been sighted 
and which are manipulated with the hands when approached.^ 
It is to be noticed that none of these objects is long dwelt on at a 
time; something new is continually sought. Such search is per- 
haps explicable in terms of fatiguing of the first response, giving 

' Watson, Psychology, p. 200, 

2 Watson, op. cit., pp. 243-245. See also his discussion of "positive and negative 
reaction tendencies," pp. 248-250. 

^ Cf. Thorndike, op. cit., Ch. X, Woodworth, op. cit., pp. 49, 50. 



THE HUMAN INSTINCTS AND APTITUDES II7 

the advantage to another response toward a different object. At 
any rate, the desire for novelty is an outstanding trait throughout 
life, causing much of the irksomeness of labor and of the pleasure 
in travel and ' recreation ' in general. 

The parental instincts of the human race are, of course, very 
obscure. We have no way of observing their manifestation un- 
complicated by training. Thorndike follows McDougall and 
many others in supposing that men, as well as women, have the 
parental bent; ^ and numerous moralists, as is well known, have 
traced the altruistic human motives to this supposed instinct. 
There are well-developed parental instincts in many of the lower 
animals, as we sometimes have good reason to know when we 
trespass on their offspring; while the appeal of children to nearly 
all human beings seems greater than can be accounted for on other 
grounds. But these evidences are inconclusive. The question 
calls for further investigation. 

The human sexual instincts are undoubtedly far less elaborate 
and specific than is the case in the lower animals, and much more 
is left to the chances of learning. The appetitive mechanisms have 
already been referred to; the instincts paralleling them are re- 
sponses that are released by the inner stimulations of the appe- 
tite. The sexual appetite in man is fairly well understood as a 
physiological matter, but what kind of instinctive behavior would 
result from it apart from experience can only be surmised. 

Watson believes that the infantile responses of smiling, gur- 
gling, cessation of crying in response to pressures on the erogenous 
zones, "including the stomach," are in this category of instincts, 
and that the love emotions thus defined are the source, by asso- 
ciation, of many if not all, of our pleasant experiences.^ This is 
essentially the Freudian doctrine, though it is also held by other 
psychologists of pleasure-pain. As we shall see, the most tenable 
theory of pleasure-pain appears to be on lines of a complex of 
inner reactions,^ and it is not imlikely that at least part of these 
are common to sexual excitement and other pleasant responses. 
But the position that sex motives are at the bottom of all or nearly 
all others, is an extreme one. 

1 Op. ciL, Ch. VIII. 2 Op. cit., pp. 201 ff. ^ Below, Ch. X. 



Il8 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

The gregarious instincts and responses to social approval and 
disapproval must be considered together, for they, like the hy- 
pothetical parental responses, are quite ill-defined, perhaps are 
not specific instincts at all.^ It is the impression of all students, so 
far as we are aware, that man is naturally gregarious, and tends to 
keep himself in the vicinity of some of his fellow-creatures. The 
analogues among the lower animals, such as bison, sheep, geese, 
are here, apparently, not misleading. The growth of cities and 
their commercial amusements appears to depend partly on such 
instincts. 

Man seems naturally to want, however, not merely the society 
of members of his kind, but also their notice of him; and not only 
their notice but their favorable regard. Their scorn is always un- 
welcome; the dread of it we know as shyness or embarrassment. 
Sometimes this imputed scorn is unbearable. Our misery in a 
' social blunder ' is a case in point, and we recall James Mill's 
observation that when men suicide rather than face ' disgrace, 
they are certainly not moved merely by the sensuous conse- 
quences of social ostracism. That these full-fledged motives of 
conformity or emulation, as we know them, are very largely com- 
pounded of habitual elements (' associations of utility ') cannot 
be questioned; but the enormous role which custom, fashion, and 
aspirations for fame or leadership has played in all human socie- 
ties strongly suggests that they are rooted in instinctive desire for 
praise. 

Under various names such as emulation, pride, vanity, desire 
for social approval, this impulse has been remarked upon by 
philosophers of all ages as one of the master human passions, and 
most students have thought that the attempt to analyze it into 
associations of sensuous pleasures is a failure. We know that very 
young babies are quite sensitive to smiles and frowns, before any 
punishments could be associated with the latter ; children in gen- 
eral ' love to be bragged about.' An old couplet has it that 

^ W. Trotter's Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War is a recent elaboration of 
this assumed group. Thorndike follows James, McDougall and others in accepting 
the group as innate, though with some reservations. He gives some evidence other 
than that mentioned above (Ch. VIII). 



THE HUMAN INSTINCTS AND APTITUDES IK) 

Men the most infamous are fond of fame; 

And those who fear not guilt yet start at shame.^ 

William James' remark that nine-tenths of the world's work is 
done by emvilation is weU known, also we have noticed the elo- 
quent passages of Adam Smith attributing economic activity 
largely to it and saying further that the Creator, through this 
original desire of human approval, has made man His vice-regent 
to pass judgment on the conduct of other men. 

As to the work of the world being done by emulation, we must 
remember that these philosophers had in mind especially Anglo- 
Saxons, whereas there are some races which have very little of the 
spirit of contest. McDougall illustrates the point by relating that 
he could not interest the native children of Borneo in games, be- 
cause they cared nothing for competition. 

Adam Smith's second observation hits the nail pretty well on 
the head, for that the binding effect of mores or customary morals 
the world over is chiefly due to fear of adverse public opinion can 
scarcely be doubted. What sort of conduct is approved or dis- 
approved by the social group varies enormously from tribe to 
tribe, but the great force that holds the people to whatever con- 
duct is thought good is always the same, — one's deference to the 
regard of his fellows. If it were not so, no society cotild maintain 
enough policemen to keep order, and few men would wear stiff 
collars. 

McDougall's classes of gregariousness and "self-assertion" are 
therefore accepted, but his other group, " seH-abasement," seems 
doubtful. Hero-worship is undoubtedly imiversal, but we should 
explain it as a case of associative transfer of our response, orig- 
inally given to social approval of ourselves, to such approval of 
our heroes. Adam Smith's similar explanation of our fawning 
upon rich and successful people may be recalled. Envy and 
jealousy also may be interpreted as baffled desires for our own 
glorification. Delight in (positive response to, more accurately 
speaking) excellence for its own sake is probably but a form of 
hero-worship, — the thing is admirable, and admiration is in- 
stinctively sought for, i. e., considered good. James has made 

1 Churchill — The Author. 



I20 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

some observations along this line, though not in connection with 
instincts. 

Original tendencies relative to ' self ' must be viewed cau- 
tiously always. Either the self is merely the body of the subject, 
and hence the concern of all his responses, or else it is a concept 
implying considerable experience and reflection. We can say, if 
we like, that the baby not only wants food but wants it for himself, 
but we have not thereby made two instincts grow where but one 
grew before. The egoistic or altruistic reference of instincts is a 
matter of description by the observer of the whole situation. The 
only original impulses of distinctly altruistic effect are in the 
parental group, which we have seen is extremely ill-defined. Pos- 
sibly these, or the gregarious group, may shade into instinctive 
sympathy and kindliness, but at any rate it is clear that if we 
instinctively seek the approval of other people, we shall soon find 
out that one of the surest means of getting it is to thwart our own 
interests somewhat for the satisfaction of some of theirs. It is also 
plain that the association process goes far toward accounting for 
sympathy with suffering which is close at hand. We react away 
from the child's * sore finger ' which he is so proud to show, be- 
cause it arouses images of our own past pains, just as we shrink 
from the sharp knife which cut us and hence is * associated ' with 
pain. In the first case there are numerous other motives impell- 
ing us toward relieving the other's distress, but in part they are 
based (associatively) on our desire to wipe out the source of un- 
pleasant stimulations and to share in the other person's pleasure 
of relief. 

In emphasizing the ' irrational ' character of this desire for ap- 
proval, however, in common with McDougall and most other 
social psychologists, let us not forget, as many of them do, the 
associationists' proposition that associative recall does not always 
reproduce all the original ideas. The links that bind reactions to- 
gether often lose their conscious correlates, and so the association 
is inexphcable so far as introspection shows. This proposition, as 
we shall see, has been fully validated by modern experimental 
work, and so we must make large allowance for the many asso- 
ciations in everyone's life of forcible and disagreeable repression, 



THE HUMAN INSTINCTS AND APTITUDES 121 

or pleasant sensuous rewards, in connection with approval or dis- 
approval of other people; and hence we must leave the task of 
delimiting the instinctive core of emulation, if there be any, for 
careful study in the future. 

The other emotional reactions of our list includes internal changes 
to be described in the next chapter; also overt behavior such as 
laughing and weeping. 

Other positive and negative reactions will be dealt with in our 
discussion of pleasure and pain. They include overt (outwardly- 
observable) seeking and avoiding responses, somewhat like reach- 
ing for an attractive object or jerking away from a pinch; and 
also, probably, numerous inner reactions of the glands, blood- 
vessels and other systems. Practically all original responses (in- 
stincts) could doubtless be classed as positive and negative, both 
from the external observer's point of view, and from the stand- 
point of the pleasant or unpleasant feeling of the subject. This 
division corresponds roughly with Thorndike's "satisfiers and 
annoy ers." ^ 

Other Alleged Instincts 

We can scarcely avoid that task which confronts every enmn- 
erator of human instincts, namely, passing on the claims of 
several other candidates for the role. Imitation, suggestion, play, 
rhythm, construction (contrivance, workmanship, creative im- 
pulse), property, habitation, migration, greed, adornment, 
cleanliness, sympathy, moral, religious, are some of the names 
which have been used by writers on the subject to describe alleged 
instincts or groups of instincts. Wallas' ''dispositions" of trial 
and error, pleasure-pain, habit and thought, which he regards as 
quasi-instincts, should also be considered. What shall we do with 
them? 

These words all have pretty definite meanings, and hence refer 
to relatively stable, well-defined modes of behavior. These modes, 
however, all clearly contain numerous learned elements, which 
elements, in our opinion, greatly predominate over the instinctive 
responses. Some of the stability is also to be ascribed to the gen- 

1 Op. cit., Ch. IX. 



122 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

eral bodily characters of the human race, and to stable features 
of the environment. 

Psychologists generally discredit imitation as an instinct, 
though Thorndike believes there are a few particular imitative 
responses, such as smiling when smiled at. Experimental work on 
lower animals seems to demonstrate that a new trick is not 
learned any more rapidly by one animal if another of his species 
who has learned it, demonstrates before him.^ Most of the imita- 
tive responses of the child can be accounted for in terms of the 
conditioned reflex (learning), and imitating habits. Of course 
there is no question that imitative learning, whatever its relation 
to instinct, plays an enormously important role in all human 
affairs. We shall have occasion to notice this aspect in later 
chapters. Suggestion also is believed to be reducible to learning; 
it is, in general, one case of ' mistaken inference,' which, as we 
shall see, characterizes all learning to some degree. 

Play, habitation and migration would be important for eco- 
nomics if they proved to have large instinctive elements not al- 
ready accounted for. The play of the child seems to be the sum of 
aU activities developing from his manipulative, vocal, visual, ex- 
plorative, locomotive and other specific responses, regulated by 
his general appetites of exercise and fatigue. Imitation of his 
elders plainly has a great part in determining the particular forms. 
The ' play ' or amusement impulses of the adult, which are con- 
trasted with work activities, contain manipulative and explora- 
tive (' curiosity ') interests, and also the important affective 
element of aversion to the compulsion which work involves. 

Sympathy, devotion, the ' moral sense,' have already in effect 
been dealt with under the heads of parental behavior and positive 
responses to the approval of other people. Religious behavior 
contains the same elements, and in addition, by numerous asso- 
ciative transfers, fear-constituents. The adornment or esthetic 
impulses generally, as they appear in adults, clearly involve re- 
sponses to social approval, positive differential responses to colors 
and forms (a baby will show preferences in this respect before 

"• Watson, Behavior, Ch. VIII ; cf. Thorndike, Ch. VIII, and McDougaU, 
Ch. IV. 



THE HUMAN INSTINCTS AND APTITUDES 1 23 

associations seem to account for them), and the physiological 
cycles involved in rhythm.^ We are certainly not prepared to 
deny that other clear instinctive elements may yet be demon- 
strated. 

Property, acquisitiveness, greed, hoarding, collection are often 
asserted to be instinctive. If they are, in any useful sense, econ- 
omists want to know it. Modern psychologists do not make much 
of this group. Thorndike thinks man has tendencies to hoard 
food, but that the innate kernel is so soon and so completely over- 
laid by associations of the utilities of property, that the enjoy- 
ment of the latter is almost wholly derived from such associations.^ 

There are three kinds of evidence for such an instinct: (i) the 
hoardings of some animals, such as squirrels and dogs; (2) the 
collecting craze which nearly everyone has at some period of life, 
with regard to stamps, coins, books, etc.; and (3) the infant's 
stout defense of his ' property ' in playthings. The last-named is 
often a mere dog-in-the-manger attitude; he is busy with some- 
thing else, but when another child attempts to use his toys, he 
comes promptly to repel the invader. In the child, it is a matter of 
original ' curiosity,' — looking at, reaching for, grasping any 
small object not feared; and instinctive rage responses if the ob- 
ject held is forcibly removed. Parents have frequent occasion to 
take objects away from children, and it is an easy transfer of the 
rage which such dispossession engenders to the stimulus of other- 
wise losing some object which the child is accustomed to manip- 
ulate. The other two Hnes of evidence are not valuable. Imitation 
and acquired interest make the collector ; and but few animals, 
not including the apes, are known to hoard. Desire for ownership 
is rather a mode of behavior which works out from the interplay 
of plastic, teachable human nature with the stable condition of 
limited supplies of desired external objects.^ 

In workmanship, contrivance or construction, so far as man- 
kind is concerned, the manipulative and visual-explorative re- 

^ Such as heart beat, respiration, alimentary cycles, sleep, pendular actions of 
the limbs. 

2 Ch. VIII. He refers to C. F. Burk, "The Collecting Instinct," Ped. Sam., 
7: 179-207 (1900). 

^ Cf. Watson, Psychology, pp. 254, 255. 



124 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

sponses are prominent. Watson says "This instinctive tendency 
(manipulation) is sometimes exalted by calling it constructive- 
ness," ^ and Thorndike's view is similar. We have noticed that 
there are original differential positive reactions, i. e., 'preferences' 
of the child among objects at hand; and these are probably ex- 
tremely important in artistic creativeness. The purely instinctive 
kernel of manipulation may be described in Watson's words: 

To reach out for objects, to scrape them along the floor, to pick them up, 
put them into the mouth, to throw them upon the floor, to move back and 
forth any parts which can be moved, is one of the best grounded and best 
observed of the instincts. 

Before there is any real construction or creation in question, a 
vast amount of learning or consolidations among other instincts 
must be achieved. The desire for excellence or art for its own 
sake is probably moulded largely out of instinctive and associa- 
tive desires for social approval, quite on associationist principles. 
(We consider the mechanics of associative learning below, Ch. XL) 

The supposed instinct of constructiveness or workmanship has 
been exploited most vigorously by Veblen, and it will be instruc- 
tive to consider his statements as rather typical of a sociologist's 
handling of the instinct-concept. 

He insists that criticisms of his concept from the physiological 
point of view are irrelevant, "instinct, being not a neurological or 
physiological concept." "It is enough to note," he says, "that in 
human behaviour this disposition is effective in such consistent, 
ubiquitous and resihent fashion that students of human culture 
will have to count with it as one of the integral hereditary traits of 
mankind." ^ Just how a behavior-trait can be hereditary without 
hereditary neurological mechanisms we are left to surmise, and 
the question remains open as to whether the workmanlike pro- 
pensities are really biologically hereditary and unitary. It is true 
that the general facts of heredity were inferred from gross ob- 
servations before much was known of the physiology involved; 
but the chance of misinterpretation is so great in this method that 
we can hardly afford to disregard the evidence of physiology. It 

^ Watson, Psychology, p. 260. 

^ The Instinct of Workmanship (1913), p. 28. (Macmillan edition.) 



THE HUMAN INSTINCTS AND APTITUDES 1 25 

was exactly by such methods as Veblen's that the religious, moral, 
self-preservation, and numerous other instincts were * proved ' 
to exist. 

Again, Veblen says that the position of the instinct of work- 
manship 

is somewhat peculiar, in that its functional content is serviceability for 
the ends of Ufe, whatever these ends may be; whereas these ends to be sub- 
served are, at least in the main, appointed and made worth whUe by the 
various other instinctive dispositions. ... It has essentially to do with 
proximate rather than ulterior ends. Yet workmanship is none the less an 
object of attention and sentiment in its own right. Efficient use of the means 
at hand and adequate management of the resources available for the pur- 
poses of life is itself an end of endeavour, and accomplishment of this kind is 
a source of gratification.^ 

Later he avers that the "parental bent" is the main instinctive 
end which the workmanlike bent subserves (p. 48). Such are the 
consequences to which McDougall's conception of instinct may 
be carried; the instincts are elves which have various tasks to per- 
form but have discretion as to the exact method of performance; 
the propensity of workmanship is a sprite of lower rank whose 
mission is to develop mechanical ways and means, — also in no 
predetermined manner, but always it must be economically, 
frugally, efficiently. Both ranks of propensities are identified 
partially by the subjective feeling- tone, — ' gratification.' What 
Veblen calls the instinct of workmanship is what other people 
have called intelligence. 

It is true that the manipulative and inquisitive responses do 
subserve the parental; and so in fact does each instinct subserve 
every other by helping to keep the body alive. More than that, 
original grasping, etc., leads to a large part of our learning of the 
properties of objects, and hence is especially to be prized on that 
account. But when the instinctive manipulative and emulative 
responses are active (when * workmanship ' is undertaken ' as an 
end in itself'), then the other response systems are inactive. 
When the instinctive elements of the parental responses are ac- 
tive, some of these same manipulative or grasping reflexes must 
necessarily be brought into play, but the organization and the 

* The Instinct of Workmanship, pp. 31, 32. 



126 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

consciousness of the total response are quite distinctive. The most 
savage mother has learned many habits which are used in protect- 
ing and caring for her child. 

Veblen sees the bias of instinctive workmanship running 
through all human societies, in the trend toward greater and 
greater mechanical efficiency. People instinctively want to do 
their jobs well, he thinks, without any waste, and they constantly 
search for better, more economical methods. This particular self- 
conscious instinct-elf is still further removed from our own con- 
ception of instinct, than is the workmanship-instinct conceived as 
a simple mechanician for the parental proclivity. The attitude of 
doing a thing well, though there be no profit in it, is a complex 
matter, much permeated with associations of approval from fel- 
low-creatures, and embracing also the multitude of various innate 
mechanisms which make specialists supremely interested in their 
own particular activity. 

This apparent drift toward economy of effort and the ceaseless 
development of human technology, we attribute to that human 
capacity for learning, for forming habits, for adapting our in- 
stinct-mechanisms to our peculiar situations, which is the chief 
glory of our race, rather than to any supposed improvement- 
instinct. If we had to depend entirely on our instincts, as our 
friends the shell-fish and insects almost do, our race might survive 
and perhaps we should all be happier,^ but our technology would 
never change. Since our action systems happen to be plastic, and 
permit of wide learning, however, the human ' bent ' toward 
economy follows from the attempts of all our instinctive or habit- 
ual want-mechanisms to act themselves out when stimulated, and 
the thwarting of part of them by the scarcity of desired goods in 
the world outside. This bent, clearly, is operative first of all 
through individuals, and so occasionally a man finds that the 
most effective way to satisfy his own wants is to prevent a number 
of other people from satisfying their wants, — that is, he seeks the 
largest measure of want-satisfaction for himself, rather than the 
largest possible social utility. Veblen's savage, whose workman- 

^ See the fanciful narrative detailing the superior adaptiveness of insects in W. M. 
Wheeler, "The Termitodoxa, or Biology and Society," Scientific Monthly, lo: 113- 
124 (1920). 



THE HUMAN INSTINCTS AND APTITUDES 1 27 

like instinct is centered on economy for the benefit of the whole 
community, has much in common with the amiable savage of 
Rousseau. 

Similar considerations apply to Taussig's ' instinct of contriv- 
ance' but in less degree. The analogues of contrivance in the 
lower animals — the dams of beavers, the nests of birds, etc. — 
are clearly stable and inheritable, though very intricate, combina- 
tions of reflexes, adjusted to a limited number of stimuli in the 
creature's normal environment. All animals have some capacity 
for learning, hence these behavior- types are not absolutely stable 
, and uniform, but the plasticity of behavior is so limited that the 
animals' technology varies Uttle from generation to generation. 
Man's instinctive contrivance, on the other hand, is so quickly 
overlaid by the habits of experience, so soon assumes a bewilder- 
ing variety of forms, that we cannot tell just what the instinctive 
kernel is. It is a little like the hypothetical instinctive basis of 
speech. 

Meaning of 'General Innate Tendencies' 

Nevertheless this conception entertained by so many social 
psychologists, of general innate tendencies or gifts or bents toward 
certain kinds of activity, in which the exact responses are not pre- 
determined, has an important place in our psychological fimda- 
mentals. We have already spoken of aptitudes. An aptitude 
means here not a specific response to definite stimuli, but a certain 
limitation in the subject's range of educability, by physiological 
structures which are grosser than reflex circuits, — these grosser 
limiting structures being hereditary and varying between in- 
dividuals. A few paragraphs from Woodworth state the situation 
concisely : 

That there are native capacities appears not only on comparing one in- 
dividual with another, or one family with another, but by comparing the 
human species with animals. Language is characteristically human, while 
finding the way home is apparently a stronger aptitude in birds, especially. 
Counting and deahng with number relations are certainly human, as is the 
power of using objects as tools. 

Native capacities differ from instincts in that they do not provide ready- 
made reactions to stimuli. We do not expect the musically gifted child to 
break out in song at some special stimulus, and thus reveal his musical gift. 



128 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

We expect him to show an interest in music, to learn it readily, remember it 
well, and perhaps show some originality in the way of making up pieces for 
himself. His native gift amounts to a specific interest and an ability to learn 
specific things. The gifted individual is not one who can do certain things 
without learning, but one who can learn those things very readily. 

There would be little profit in attempting an inventory of this side of 
native equipment. We should simply have to enumerate the various occupa- 
tions of mankind, and the various classes of objects in which he finds an 
interest, and in deahng with which he shows facility.^ 

Neither Woodworth nor any other psychologist, so far as we 
know, tells us what may be the neural basis of these abiUties; but 
evidently it is to some degree provided by the hereditary or- 
ganization of certain parts of the nervous system, which limit the 
number of connections or habits which it is possible for that in- 
dividual to acquire in a given class of responses, or at least deter- 
mine the facility with which new connections in that class can be 
acquired. 

These hypothetical structures are to particular abilities, prob- 
ably, what the cerebral cortex is to general educability as a whole. 
The animals (and some abnormal human beings) whose heredi- 
tary anatomical endowment includes an inferior cerebral cortex, 
are incapable of much learning; while normal man, with the larger 
brain, is the least limited of all animals in range of possible new 
reflexes, that is, of learning and acquiring new interests. No 
particular habit is determined by the size of the brain, but the 
general range of habit-formation is thus determined. 

Now in certain connections a sociologist may generalize about 
* the disposition of habit-formation ' (which, we shall see, is but 
another name for trial and error, learning, reasoning, all at once) 
to good purpose. So also of the smaller ranges of educability, as 
the taste for music or for contrivance, or the spirit of enterprise 
or the talent for oratory. But what generalizations can accurately 
be made about any given one of these vague propensities, which 
are by definition an uncertain blend of nature and nurture, is a 
more difficult question even than the corresponding task vdth an 
instinct. 

They are not instincts. But what does it matter which name we 
use? The main danger in social science from an uncritical use of 

1 Op. cit., p. 59. 



THE HUMAN INSTINCTS AND APTITUDES 1 29 

the term ' instinct/ is that quaHties characteristic of one instinct 
or appetite are liable to be freely generalized as belonging to all 
' instincts,' and fallacious arguments may be drawn from this 
assumption. For example, it is now rather common to assume 
that all instincts are subject to the Freudian formulae of repres- 
sion and sublimation — that if any one is baffled it will break out 
in nervous disorders, and that its motive force can usually be 
diverted into socially beneficial channels if you find the right 
substitutes.^ Our discussion of the appetites of sex, hunger, exer- 
cise and so on, has shown that there are periodic chemical secre- 
tions in the body, or deficits connected with them, which render 
these appetites difficult if not impossible completely and per- 
manently to repress, but such a condition apparently does not 
exist in others of the instinctive groups, such as attack and de- 
fense, fear, emulation, curiosity and manipulation or workman- 
ship. The discomfort of monotonous labor may be due to the 
baffling of the latter instincts, but it may on the other hand be 
traced to fatigue of the special processes constantly employed and 
to the appetite for exercise of the others not used. The net result 
of the two explanations in this case, sociologically, happens to be 
much the same; but in other cases, as in the query suggested by 
Wallas, that perhaps the instinct of fear is being baulked too 
much in modern society, the results might be vastly different. 
The point is that the differing mechanisms of appetites, instincts 
and innate general aptitudes make it unsafe to carry over gen- 
eralizations from one class to another. 

^ E. g., Wallas: "For we cannot, in St. Paul's sense, ' mortify ' our dispositions. 
If they are not stimulated, they do not therefore die. If we leave unstimulated, or, 
to use a shorter term, if we ' baulk ' any one of our main dispositions, Curiosity, 
Property, Trial and Error, Sex and the rest, we produce in ourselves a state of 
nervous strain." — Great Society, p. 65. 

This doctrine, which has been popularized by the Freudian School, has been 
swallowed whole by a number of social scientists, such as Carle ton Parker. J. M. 
Clark appears to accept it on Wallas' authority ("Economics and Modern Psychol- 
ogy," Jour. Pol. Econ., 27: 1-30). E. R. Groves, "Sociology and Psycho-analytic 
Psychology; An Interpretation of the Freudian Hypothesis," Am. Jour. Sociol., 
23: 107-116 (1917) naturally says, "It is Freud's theory of the sublimation of in- 
stincts that most interests the sociologist," and he speaks of the instincts gener- 
ally as "clamoring for gratification." 



I30 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

The distinction between instinct and intelligence, nature and 
nurture, is, after all, of great moment, for nurture is amenable to 
our control in a much different way than nature. For most pur- 
poses it is not serviceable to lump them together. The question is 
in each case, how many of the phenomena attributed to instinct 
are really the result of innate, inheritable and substantially in- 
eradicable human behavior-mechanisms. 

There is, of course, no need of keeping track of the minute ele- 
ments if you are sure you have a stable and accurately definable 
higher unit. A shoe manufacturer need not bother about the 
separate tissues composing the human foot. A behavior-unit 
likewise, to be stable enough for sociological handling, need not 
consist wholly of instinctive elements, it may include such modi- 
fications thereof as the normal man's environment are sure to 
make; and it is clear that such a propensity as ' the desire to get 
the greatest wealth for the least sacrifice of goods or labor ' meets 
this specification pretty well. But if the behavior designated as 
' workmanship ' or as the result of some other ' instinct ' is quite 
variable in different times and places, because the elementary 
responses are modified by diverse environments, then the concept 
of instinct of workmanship will be no more serviceable than its 
predecessors, the moral, religious or imitative instincts. 

It would be desirable, before we leave the topic of the nature 
and number of instincts, to examine the Freudian contributions. 
But we shall discuss in another connection the more important 
points of this school's doctrines, and here it may be said that their 
inventory of instincts is the point of least agreement among 
themselves. They agree in attaching overwhelming importance 
to the sexual impulses, but if they admit independent motives, 
they talk vaguely of the ' instinct of self-preservation,' or the 
' stream of desire ' or ' the libido,' to which concepts we have al- 
ready paid our respects. It is the natural result of their reliance 
on subjective and gross behavior data, with little attempt to 
check up the neural correlates. Professors Holt and Watson have 
made notable contributions to psychology by interpreting the 
Freudian results in terms of modern physiological concepts. 



CHAPTER X 

EMOTION, PLEASURE AND PAIN 

Emotions Believed to be Conscious Correlates of 
Certain Instincts 

With the modern theory of instinct-mechanisms in mind, we are 
now equipped to make some headway on the connection of the 
instincts with emotions, and with pain and pleasure, thus fitting 
our old friends the feelings into the structures of motives and 
action. 

It is one of the merits of McDougall's book that he emphasized 
the important correlation between instincts and emotions. To 
him the principal elementary emotions are inseparable parts of the 
primary instincts, on the schemes we have already exhibited. He 
protests against definitions of instinct which run simply in terms of 
reflexes, for they leave Hamlet out of the play altogether. The 
conscious entity, or emotion, is the real nucleus of the instinct to 
him. He defines an instinct, therefore, as 

an inherited or innate psychophysical disposition which determines its pos- 
sessor to perceive, and to pay attention to, objects of a certain class, to ex- 
perience an emotional excitement of a particular quaKty upon perceiving 
such an object, and to act in regard to it in a particular manner, or, at least, 
to experience an impulse to such action. i 

This * psychophysical disposition ' is indeed based on "a com- 
pound system of sensorimotor arcs " (about which McDougall has 
little more to say in the book) ; but after the agent has pricked up 
his ears toward the exciting object, we are given to understand, 
his behavior can no longer be predicted from the most complete 
knowledge of the reflex arcs.^ 

The intimate connection between instinct and emotion had 
indeed been brought into prominence by James about 1885. An 

1 Op. cit., Ch. I, p. 29. 

^ This insistence on a quasi-intelligent, groping consciousness as an essential 
part of the general concept of instinct is rather general among the British psy- 
chologists who treat of the subject. Lloyd Morgan's phrase "persistency with 



132 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

emotion, he believed, is a sudden complex of bodily sensations 
arising from our instinctive reactions toward appropriate stimuli. 
The sight of a ferocious animal coming toward us, for example, 
stimulates reflexly in us by means of our inherited neural connec- 
tions, about the same kinds of reactions that the cat inspires in 
the mouse, — various twitchings and tremblings and movements 
of running away, palpitations of the heart, glandular actions such 
as perspiration secretions, also the various reactions which we 
describe as dryness of the throat, heaviness in the pit of the 
stomach, and others which we cannot localize. Reflexes of the 
vasomotor system, causing blushing and paleness, of the facial 
muscles, and of glands such as those secreting tears, are of course 
prominent in the expression of emotions. 

So that James said it is probably not true, as appears to com- 
mon sense (and to some psychologists, as McDougall) that we 
experience the emotion in consciousness and then proceed to 
' express ' it by appropriate actions; but we are angry because we 
strike (and have other simultaneous reactions) , are afraid because 
we tremble and run away, are sorry because we cry. The reac- 
tions and the emotional consciousness, that is, occur at the same 
time, the latter being the complex of sensations arising from the 
former. That James, no less than McDougall, recognized the 
constant coordination of emotion and instinct may be seen from 
his (James') statement: 

Every object that excites an instinct excites an emotion as well. The only 
distinction one may draw is that the reaction called emotional terminates in 
the subject's own body, whilst the reaction called instinctive is apt to go 
farther and enter into practical relations with the exciting object.^ 

varied effort " is enlarged on by Stout, to the point that "instinctive activity essen- 
tially involves intelligent consciousness " (Manual of Psy., p. 347) . At a symposium 
of British psychologists on instinct and intelligence in 191 1, C. E. Myers said 
"To my mind, it is certain that on the occasion of the chick's first peck or the duck- 
ling's first swim the bird is dimly, of course very dimly, conscious of the way in 
which it is about to act " (Brit. Jour. Psy., Vol. Ill, pt. iii). Doubtless most of what 
these authorities say about "attention" and "interest" being correlated with first 
performances is true, but the "persistency" must be attributed, as we have ex- 
plained, to the existence of several pre-established mechanisms which are succes- 
sively aroused, unless "consciousness" is supposed to have a magic power of direction 
of action. 

1 Briefer Course, Ch. XXIV, p. 371. 



EMOTION, PLEASURE AND PAIN I33 

Evidence Pro and Con 

Recent studies have partially confirmed as well as amplified the 
James-Lange view. The experimental work of Sherrington, to be 
sure, seemed to show that dogs whose visceral sense-organs had 
been disconnected from the brain were still capable of experienc- 
ing emotion; but Herrick thinks the experiments were not very 
convincing.^ Cannon's excellent investigations on the physio- 
logical basis of certain emotional states indicate that the bodily 
changes are the same in different emotions, and hence that the 
sensations from them cannot give the full quality of the emotion. 
It is not pretended, however, that Cannon or anyone else has 
reached an even tolerably complete analysis of all the reactions 
correlated with the emotions and so the James-Lange theory, with 
few amendments, remains the leading hypothesis. A number of 
psychologists, it is true, appear not to agree to the instinctive 
basis of emotions; for instance Stout says an emotion is "a imique 
kind of feeling-attitude towards an object." ^ But if such au- 
thors are pressed as to the neural correlates of this unique and 
innate consciousness, they will be driven to postulate some in- 
stinctive organization of reflex circuits. Without adopting any 
particular view as to the sensational or other elements in the 
emotional consciousness, therefore, we are fully justified in assum- 
ing that in some way the emotions are all underlain by instinctive 
responses. 

A kind of evidence which the present writer has not seen con- 
sidered by the authorities is the alternation he has observed of 
emotional states, which is strikingly, comparable to ' retinal 
rivalry ' and analogous alternations of antagonistic responses. 
After a period of depression or elation lasting an hour or so, one 
fimds his mood changing even though the situation has not altered. 
The responses of the first, apparently, have become fatigued, and 
so the others are released. (See below, Ch. XI, on alternation of 
responses in learning.) 

Whether all or any instincts are always emotional is another 
question, and is a part of the general problem of the physiological 

1 Op. ciL, p. 288. 2 op. cit., p. 418. 



134 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

conditions of consciousness. Some inherited reflexes, such as those 
of the heart and other viscera, involve no consciousness at all, and 
there are also habitual responses which were conscious at the 
time of learning, like the movements of writing, but which have 
' decayed ' into unconsciousness except when the subject's ' at- 
tention ' is upon them. It seems possible that there are instinctive 
acts also which may become unconscious at times, such as eating, 
when the focus of the subject's activity is elsewhere. Professor 
Holt's suggestion, that one is always conscious of that object to 
which his body as a whole is responding ^ — be it the soimd of the 
imaginal spoken words, the form of the marks on the paper, the 
movements of the pen, or the tree out of the window — is one of 
the most satisfactory statements of the relation, for such object 
clearly does correspond closely to the focal point of attention. 
Whether or not the emotion is experienced, then, when the in- 
stinctive apparatus is active, may be foimd to depend on the 
place the latter occupies in the subject's total response at the 
moment. In that case McDougall's theory of emotion as the true 
heart of instinct will be relegated to a purely subjective psy- 
chology. 

Emotional ' Drives ' in Motives 

Now what place have the emotions in human motives? Are 
they the drive behind all action, as has been proverbial, while the 
reason or intelligence is merely the directing agency? Are the two 
respectively the ' gasoline ' and the * steering-gear ' ? ^ From our 
discussions it is clear that the emotions as conscious states cannot 
be regarded as motive powers, without resort to the mystical 
principle of interaction between radically different entities called 
* mind ' and ' body.' But the general opinion that emotions are 
powerful (not necessarily the only) movers to action is verified 
when we investigate further the physiological mechanisms of 
them, that is, of the instincts. 

Cannon foimd ^ that the reactions which he studied, connected 
with emotional excitement, are such as put the body into a state 

^ See the Freudian Wish, Supplement, pp. 172 fif. 

2 The old-fashioned metaphor was "Reason the card; passion the gale." 

' W. B. Cannon, Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage (1915)- 



EMOTION, PLEASURE AND PAIN I35 

of extra preparedness for strenuous efforts. Experiments re- 
vealed that in fear, pain and rage the adrenal glands are stimu- 
lated reflexly to secrete their specific product, adrenalin, into the 
blood, where in turn it stimulates an outpouring of sugar from the 
liver into the blood, and it also hastens the coagulation of blood in 
the case of wounds. Such sugar-secretion is the form of stored 
energy which can be most quickly used to replenish exhausted 
muscles, and so the muscles under emotional conditions are able 
to work longer and harder without arrest by fatigue than nor- 
mally. Other reactions in these states, and also in worry, are the 
stopping of digestive movements and gastric secretions, as well as 
the diversion of blood from the abdomen to the heart, lungs, 
central nervous system and limbs. As Cannon says, "Every one 
of these visceral changes is directly serviceable in making the 
organism more effective in the violent display of energy which 
fear or rage or pain may involve." ^ (On the other hand, it is ob- 
vious that many of the instinctive reactions are detrimental to 
effectiveness, as the trembling and inhibition of movement in 
fear.) Similar reactions were observed in students in athletic con- 
tests and previous to examinations. Some of these reactions 
were even brought about artificially, by the injection of adrenalin. 
Such are some of the obscure processes which coexist with 
emotions, and make the well-known extra physical force of the 
latter intelligible on physiological grounds. There are munerous 
anecdotes to the same effect, as the boy who jumped a high fence 
when pursued by a bull, and the man Darwin tells about who 
worked himself into a passion preparatory to doing some extra 
hard tasks. Watson and Morgan add a more scientific instance 
by demonstrating that an infant can hold itself suspended by 
grasping a rod for a longer time when it is made angry than when 
it is at peace with the world.^ 

1 P. 216. 

2 Op. cit., ' Emotional Reactions,' etc., p. 170. An interesting suggestion arising 
from these recent studies of emotional behavior is that the complexes of preparatory 
reactions thus aroused instinctively by the mere perception of the appropriate object 
(of fear, rage, love, etc.) strongly suggest the inheritance, at some state in the race 
development, of acquired habits or "conditioned reflexes." The various responses 
making up the emotion are such as would be aroused serially as the situation de- 
velops, say in a fight; and their arousal all at once instinctively by the distant pros- 



136 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

Pain and Pleasure Believed Minor Emotions 

So much for the major emotions. Now what of pain and pleas- 
ure, pleasantness and unpleasantness, whose pricks we are nearly 
always feeling and which apparently are driving us to action? 
Can we correlate them with bodily processes too? That question 
is even more controversial than the corresponding one concerning 
the emotions, but the trend of expert opinion seems to be toward 
the same explanation for both classes of feeling. We cannot quite 
say that emotions are algedonic (affective) feelings grown tall, 
because the classes of emotions and feelings overlap, — all emo- 
tions are pleasant or unpleasant, but not all pleasant or painful 
feelings are emotions. The lesser feeHngs which are not called 
emotions, however, are probably correlated with neural processes 
similar to those underlying emotions. Unpleasant feeling and 
emotion, on this theory, is the conscious correlate of complex in- 
stinctive reactions, including such visceral and other changes as 
we have seen in emotion, which responses in general are in the 
negative direction of avoidance of danger to the subject, of re- 
action away from some harmful source of stimulation. Pleasant 
feeling and emotion on the other hand, attend the instinctive 
response-complexes which are usually in the direction of beneficial 
stimulation, at least in the positive direction of tolerating or pro- 
longing the stimulating situation. 

Introspectively, the lesser hedonic feelings undoubtedly have 
much in common with the emotions. Annoyance, dejection, grief, 
for instance, all involve similar uncomfortable inner sensations. 
Both classes clearly appear to furnish motive ' drives ' toward or 
away from their objects. As we know. Cannon found substan- 
tially the same inner changes connected with pain as with fear 
and rage. Yet psychologists have been slow to group the two 
kinds of affective consciousness together. The reason is that the 
instinctive expressions of the emotions are more vigorous, and, to 
outward appearance, are more uniform throughout the human 

pect of such a consummation as a fight is analogous to the acquired complex of 
preparatory eating-responses (especially secretion of saliva) at the sight of food. 
See H. W. Chase, "On the Inheritance of Acquired Modifications of Behavior," 
Am. Jour. Psy., 28: 175-190 (1917). 



EMOTION, PLEASURE AND PAIN \yj 

race, than the physiological concomitants of minor pleasantness 
and impleasantness. It was long supposed that a feeling, like a 
sensation, was the termination of its stimulation; and if any action 
came of it, the act was initiated by the will, after due deliberation 
over its various provocations. Hence McDougall tacitly denies 
that the feelings are in any way related to the instincts, for he ex- 
plicitly denies that they are springs of action. He even fails to 
mention them among the * imiversal tendencies of the mind ' 
among which he includes habit-formation,^ though he repeatedly 
ascribes to them power of prolonging or inhibiting instinctive 
actions and thus of shaping habits.^ 

The imperious impulse to end a painful or unpleasant situation, 
and the strong tendency to prolong a pleasant one, are so universal 
and so obvious that philosophy and common sense have always 
taken those powers of pain and pleasure for granted; they did not 
know the physiological processes involved, and were content to 
ascribe mechanical efficiency to these states of mind until Bain 
began to wonder how it happens. We have seen something of the 
interminable controversies over hedonism — when is pleasure not 
pleasure, or higher and lower pleasures, and what not — that re- 
sulted from the interactionist formula. And modern psycholo- 
gists who do not beHeve in interaction, drop into interactionist 
assumptions when they talk of pleasure ' stamping ' a new move- 
ment into a habit, and pain ' stamping ' it out.^ 

The wide differences of detail, among pleasures and pains, are 
an obstacle to any theory. The pleasures of a good dinner and of 
a good deed, or the unpleasantness of an aching tooth and of dis- 
covering we have used the wrong fork at a dinner, to use standard 
illustrations, seem to have little enough in common, especially 
when we learn from physiology that pains from the teeth, from 
the skin and from some other tracts are definitely correlated with 
certain nerve-endings, — they are true sensations. Those pains 
are not invariably impleasant. But pleasant experiences all have 
one character in common, the general attitude of the subject. He 

^ O^. cit., pp. 115-116. 2 g g^^ at p 42. 

^ See Watson's collection of such instances from Thorndike, Judd, Angell, Ladd 
and other authorities in his Behavior. 



138 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

will want to prolong them, or will not be inclined to avoid them. 
Unpleasant experiences he will end as quickly as he can. These 
are the common characters which really exhaust the meanings of 
the words.^ These attitudes moreover, are as innate as the quali- 
ties of sensation. We do not learn to shrink from pain, though we 
learn which things are painful and thus are to be shrunk from. 

Physiological Correlates of Pain and Pleasure 

Looking beyond these gross behavior characteristics, psy- 
chologists and physiologists have been giving much attention in 
recent years to the question of the physiological correlates of pain 
and pleasure, with the result that there is a large and contradic- 
tory literature.^ 

The theories are of two general types. The first assumes that 
affection or feeling is a diffuse kind of sensation, correlated with 
special rudimentary sense-organs which have not as yet been dis- 
covered. The other holds that it is a matter of the internal econ- 
omy of all the neurons involved in the response which is felt, as 
a whole, to be pleasant or unpleasant. The second type thus dis- 
penses with the undiscovered sense-organs, and it has some ad- 
vantage in cases where the same experience is at times pleasant, 
at other times unpleasant. Experiments show that nimierous 
sensations, odors for example, pass from pleasantness to im- 
pleasantness as their intensity is increased, and tasks which are 
agreeable at the beginning are often disagreeable at the end. 

^ James Mill gave about the above account of pain and pleasure, but his state- 
ment "A man knows (the difference) by feeling it; and this is the whole account of 
the phenomenon" (Ch. XVII) is not quite accurate. The difference in attitude is 
evident in the man's behavior, quite apart from appeal to his consciousness. Thorn- 
dike's first approximation of "satisfying" and "annoying" is also in terms of this 
duality of attitude and he points out the necessity of resorting to minute physio- 
logical analysis because "successful operation," or other gross behavior explana- 
tions always return in a circle to satisfyingness or annojdngness itself (Original 
Nature, etc., p. 123). Cf. Titchener, Textbook, Sec. 72; Holmes, "Pleasure, Pain 
and the Beginnings of Intelligence," Jour. Comp. Neurol, and Psy., 20: 145-164 
(iQio), and Stout, op. cit., p. 327. 

^ The literature up to 1908 is summarized by Max Meyer in "The Nervous 
Correlate of Pleasantness and Unpleasantness," Psy. Rev., 1908, pp. 201 ff., 392 ff. 
More recent discussions are in Herrick, Neurology, Ch. XVIII, and in other refer- 
ences mentioned below. 



EMOTION, PLEASURE AND PAIN 1 39 

Spencer regarded pleasure as the "concomitant of heightened 
nervous discharge," and pain the concomitant of lessened dis- 
charge; in which theory he was followed by Bain and Baldwin.^ 
H. R. Marshall in 1893, connected the two states with surplus or 
deficit of nutrition in the neurons, making fatigue the decisive 
factor,^ Max Meyer and Warner Fite ^ consider that it is a ques- 
tion of reinforcement or inhibition of neural currents by responses 
innervated at approximately the same time. Thorndike's theory 
hinges, like Marshall's, on the nutrition or other internal condi- 
tions of the neurons.^ 

Theories of this type all have their special merits and special 
difficulties, though doubtless fatigue is an important factor in 
many states of unpleasantness. The discovery of independent 
pain-sense-organs, moreover, has given encouragement to the 
type which considers affection as a quasi-sensation, — this type 
of theory also being congenial to the doctrine of sensationalism 
(that all consciousness is derived ultimately from sensations). 
Stumpf was an early champion of it, and Titchener and Watson 
are among many contemporary exponents.^ Knight Dvmlap has 
recently suggested that the James-Lange theory should be ex- 
tended to include feeling, as Dunlap believes feeling is correlated 
with obscure bodily changes, including stimulation of nerve end- 
ings in the muscles of the blood vessels, alimentary canal, ducts of 
larger glands, etc.^ He points out that some sensations, as those of 
himger, are undoubtedly from inner stimulation and are not re- 
ferred to any particular place; which fact gives the hint that the 
difference between sensation and feeling is only a matter of spatial 
localization. The impleasantness of fatigue, we may add, is per- 
haps due to stimulation of special sense-organs by the toxins of 
fatigue. In connection with any theory of the sensational type, 
we must remember that the impulse from the sense-organ has to 
get out and produce response. 

^ Holmes, op. cit., pp. 152-154. 
^ His book is entitled Pain, Pleasure and Esthetics. 

' W. Fite, "The Place of Pleasure and Pain in the Functional Psychology," Psy. 
Rev., 10: 633-644 (1903). * O^. a7., Ch. IX. Cf. pp. 227, 228. 

* Titchener, Textbook, Sec. 74; Watson, op. cit., Ch. I. 
^ "Thought-Content and Feeling," Psy. Rev., 23: 49-70 (1916). 



I40 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

How does it happen that these inner stimuli of pleasantness are 
given just in connection with an outwardly pleasant situation, 
and that only the unpleasant inner stimuli are given by the 
muscles and glands when the outer conditions are annoying? 

Whether the immediate neural correlate of feeling is a special 
reflex or a condition of the neurons of the general response, it 
seems clear that the correlate is part of the preorganized instinc- 
tive response pattern adjusted to the outer situation. This con- 
clusion is inevitable from the universal connection between 
pleasantness and seeking responses, etc. If we follow the James- 
Lange lead tentatively, we shall go farther and say that in all 
groups of responses to ' annoying ' stimuli there is a common 
group of inner reactions whose unlocalized consciousness has the 
quality of unpleasantness. The response by original nature to the 
annoying object * a hot iron,' for instance, is partly the jerking 
away of that part of the body which has touched it; this reflex is 
protective and instinctive, but it is not all of the response. There 
are the concomitant inner reflexes of the blood vessels, glands, 
etc. Cannon has demonstrated some of these inner reactions in 
pain — we should never have suspected their existence from mere 
introspective evidence — and undoubtedly there are many more 
yet to be found. With experience, the original responses are ex- 
tended by habits, and then our outwardly observable movements 
in the painful situation are different from the original response, 
but the instinctive inner complex of sensations that is character- 
istic of pain, remains. 

When the situation is called not painful but merely unpleasant, 
as in embarrassment, the outer part of the instinctive response is 
the facial expression of annoyance and probably the movements 
and posture we call cringing or shrinking ; but these are soon over- 
laid by habits. The inner reactions, however, remain similar in 
all people at all times; there are vasomotor changes (blushing or 
paleness), variation in the heart action, responses in the throat 
and stomach which give sensations of dr)rness, heaviness, etc., 
and many others, known and unknown. Wundt was one of 
the first psychologists to investigate, by registering instruments, 
the changes in pulse, respiration, temperature and so on which 



EMOTION, PLEASURE AND PAIN 14I 

accompany the affective consciousness. If the situation is of a cer- 
tain crucial kind, the responses become so vigorous and complex 
that collectively they are called an emotion. The pleasant emo- 
tions, like other feelings, are usually correlated with outward 
responses welcoming or seeking beneficial objects, as in love ; and 
the unpleasant emotions, like fear and rage, are connected with 
movements to avoid or repel harmful objects. All contain a host 
of inner reactions, as we have seen, and we must assume that 
there is enough overlapping of these — and perhaps also among 
the outwardly observable reactions — to give to one class its 
common character of pleasantness, and to the other its earmark 
of unpleasantness. 

Two objections may occur to the reader, which may be cleared 
up. It may be said that all pleasant objects are not beneficial 
(and that further, some repelling reactions are pleasant, as some- 
times in pugnacity). But the theory correlates the feeling with 
the seeking or avoiding response rather than with the ultimate 
effect of the object on the subject. What we do strive for is pleas- 
ant to us, be it saving grace or moonshine whiskey, and in a rough 
way, by natural selection, the surviving species have come to like 
and seek what is good for them. And the ferocity which is pleas- 
ant is that of the hunt; real rage such as comes from obstruction 
is unpleasant enough. It may further be objected that not all 
reactions are pleasant or unpleasant; some are indifferent. That 
is quite possible, according to the theory, for unless a reflex is 
connected (either instinctively or by habit — ' association ') with 
an innate group of the feeling-reactions and so arouses them when 
it is aroused, it will be indifferent as to affective tone. Whether or 
not there are any such isolated responses may be determined in 
the future, without making any difference to the theory. 

There are many other disputed points which must be left to the 
experts. Since the most crucial part of the problem of feeling is 
the question of neural correlates, we quote the bulk of the sum- 
mary of a recent discussion of pain and pleasure by the neurologist 
Herrick, which leans strongly in the James-Lange direction: ^ 

1 The trend is so marked throughout modem physiological and behavior psy- 
chological literature, that the present writer had reached these views before he read 
Herrick. 



142 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

In the human organism pain appears to be a true sensation with its own 
receptors, probably with independent peripheral neurons (in some cases at 
least), and certainly with well-localized conduction paths and cerebral cen- 
ters, these centers being thalamic and not cortical. Pain appears to be closely 
related neurologically with feelings of unpleasantness and pleasantness, and 
these, in turn, with the higher emotions and the affective life in general. . . . 
Pleasantness and unpleasantness are not regarded simply as attributes of 
specific sensory processes in any case, but rather as a mode of reaction or phys- 
iological attitude of the whole nervous system intimately bound up with 
certain visceral reactions of a protective sort whose central control is effected 
in the ventral and medial parts of the thalamus. . . . This mechanism is 
phylogenetically very old, and in lower vertebrates which lack the cerebral 
cortex it is adequate to direct avoiding reactions to noxious stimuli and seek- 
ing reactions to beneficial stimuli. With the appearance of the cortex in 
vertebrate evolution these thalamic centers became intimately connected 
with the association centers of the cerebral hemispheres, and an intelligent 
analysis of the feelings of unpleasantness and pleasantness became possible. 
... In the normal man these mechanisms may function with a minimum of 
cortical control, giving the general feeling tone of well-being or malaise, or 
they may be tied up with the most complex cortical processes, thus entering 
into the fabric of the higher sentiments and affections and becoming impor- 
tant factors in shaping human conduct.^ 

The statement that pleasure and pain and emotion are always 
the results of reactions is an affront to common sense, which un- 
hesitatingly declares, with the association psychologists, that 
' the idea of pleasure ' is what prompts us to action. The latter 
statement, like others involving interaction between the mental 
and the material, is true enough for a good many purposes; but if 
we have the physiological series complete in our minds, we shall 
come to know more accurately under what conditions, what ideas 
of pleasure, lead to what actions; and hence provide for better 
control of human behavior. Our reconciliation of the two points 
of view, then, is as follows : We take pleasure in things originally 
because instinctively we seek them; but once we have experienced 
the pleasure, its recollection does undoubtedly induce us to re- 
peat the action. But now we are slipping a psychical link into the 
chain, — how can the "recollection of pleasure" (substantially 
the same thing as the "idea of pleasure") act on our nerves and 
muscles? This question makes necessary an examination of the 
fundamentals of the learning process, for the influence of ex- 

' C. J. Herrick, Introduction to Neurology, 2d ed. (1915, 1918), pp. 289-290. 



EMOTION, PLEASURE AND PAIN 143 

perience just described is the result of acquired mechanisms, not 
wholly of innate reflexes. How the mechanisms of pleasantness 
and unpleasantness cooperate in setting up new mechanisms of 
habit (and therefore of motives), is a problem full of interest to 
us. Unfortunately there is small agreement on it among psy- 
chologists, but the foregoing conception of feeling enables us to fit 
the facts of consciousness into the facts of behavior and physi- 
ology with considerable success. 



CHAPTER XI 



THE LEARNING PROCESS 



We have now taken stock in a general way of the original nature 
of man, so far as concerns his motives to action; and we have 
found that the appetites, instincts, emotions, pleasures and pains 
are all based on an inherited behavior-equipment, which consists 
of the sense-organs, muscles, glands, with reflex neural circuits 
connecting them into instinctive responses. To this conclusion 
we are led, whether we consider the emotional and affective con- 
sciousnesses as complexes of sensations — each sensation being 
correlated with a certain partial response — or as unique entities 
linked with the organism's gross behavior. We must now con- 
sider the means by which new behavior-mechanisms are acquired 
to supplement the innate, and thereby to perfect the living crea- 
ture's adjustment to his own special surroundings. In brief, we 
shall examine the learning process. 

Elements of the Problem 

Some bafifling psychological questions are soon encountered. 
The tutoring influence of pleasant and painful experiences, for 
example, are evident to anyone's general observation, but the 
difl&culty of accounting for the matter in terms of new neural 
pathways is so great that few psychologists yet agree as to what 
part pleasure and pain do play in learning. A somewhat com- 
parable problem is presented by ' association of ideas ' — how do 
ideas take effect on flesh and bone? Then if we remember the 
emphasis laid on habit by the ' functional psychologists,' we 
wonder if habitual mechanisms can be prime movers to action, 
or if McDougall is right in tracing all their drive to the instincts. 
We do seem to have many habits like dressing or buying or vot- 
ing in certain ways, to which we are slaves long after the original 
interests which established them have passed away. And if a 



THE LEARNING PROCESS 145 

habit may be a prime mover, what are the b'mits within which 
such artificial motives can be acquired? How do some lines of 
action become so fixed upon us as to be matters of principle or 
conscience? Presently we reach the puzzle of voluntary and 
rational action, which is apparently a matter neither of instinct 
nor of habit. Voluntary behavior evidently is influenced greatly 
by pleasure and pain, but by pleasures and pains which are in the 
future, and which may never have been experienced by the agent 
or anyone else, — only inferred rationally. How can this be? 

Difficult as are these problems, we shall find that they can be 
connected up with the innate motive-elements which we have 
been considering, and the whole system made fairly intelligible, 
if we have recourse again to their hidden common denominator, 
the nervous system. 

Habit and Association op Ideas — Two Sides of 
THE Same Process 

Let us begin with habit and association of ideas. The phe- 
nomena of these two entities of different planes are strikingly 
similar. A habit, which is a matter of performing a certain chain 
of acts in serial fashion, is acquired and gradually perfected by 
frequent repetition of the acts in the same order; an association of 
ideas such as the learning of a poem, is acquired and strengthened 
in just the same way. In both cases it is necessary that the ele- 
mentary acts or ideas be experienced closely together in time. 
Contiguity, therefore, is a principle governing each process, as well 
SiS frequency . Sometimes when there is sufficient affective feeling 
involved, contiguity alone will firmly establish either a habit or an 
association, — a burned child dreads the fire. Both in habit and 
in association too, recency is an important principle; they both 
decay with disuse. Again, association by similarity is paralleled 
by the performance of habits at the wrong cue, as when a man 
puUs out his latchkey on his friend's doorstep. 

There is even another suggestive resemblance. In most habits, 
as James remarked, the execution of one of the constituent re- 
flexes serves as stimulus to the next one, and so on to the end of 
the series. Outer stimuH, of course, are likely to give some of the 



146 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

cues, but in walking, playing the piano, or performing any athletic 
game skillfully, the * feel ' of it, or the kinesthetic sensations, are 
most important. The existence of kinesthetic sense-organs in 
the muscles has been verified by anatomical research, and their 
importance both in the learning process and in one's general con- 
sciousness is very great. Watson demonstrated, for example, that 
rats form the habit of treading the Hampton Court maze in the 
most direct manner possible in order to get food, chiefly imder 
guidance of the kinesthetic sense. If an alley is suddenly short- 
ened, the rat will biraip into the wall; and if he is bhnded he will 
learn the maze almost as readily as when he has the advantage of 
sight.^ This playing-out of a chain of responses, all within the 
animal, so to speak, is comparable to the process of associative 
recall, when idea follows idea without reference to outer stimuli. 

Observe now that all these correspondences between habit and 
association of ideas are just what would be expected upon the 
hj^othesis developed above, that the image is simply the revival 
of the original response at a low tension. It has long seemed prob- 
able to psychologists — for instance to Bain and James — that 
the same ' tracks ' in the brain are active in recall as in original 
sensation, and the more recent doctrine, that the whole reflex 
circuit is in some degree active when an image is experienced, is 
only a sHght modification of the older view. 

There is one divergence between habit and association which 
when fully considered, bridges the gap between the association 
psychology and the modern ' functional ' systems. Association of 
ideas ex hypothesi is always conscious; while the acting-out of a 
habit is frequently unconscious. But the introspectionists have 
always been puzzled by intermediate ideas dropping out of con- 
sciousness in associative recalls, and by the phenomena of ' un- 
conscious judgments.' As we have seen. Hartley and the Mills 
emphasized strongly this disappearance of * imimportant ' linking 
ideas, because it obscures the associative origin of many beliefs 
and desires. Then we must remember that any habitual action 
may be performed consciously if the subject * gives his attention 
to it,' and so far as physiologists know, without any different 

1 Behavior, Ch. VI. 



THE LEARNING PROCESS I47 

mechanism of response being used. According to Professor Holt, 
giving one's attention to it simply means that this response 
for the moment stands at the apex of all the body's activities. 
Though ideas can never be unconscious, therefore, there are fre- 
quently unconscious links associating them, and these links seem 
to correspond to habit-mechanisms which are subordinated to 
the focal activity that appears in consciousness. 

The upshot of it is that laws of habit-formation are laws of 
association, and are, in fact, laws of learning. The correspond- 
ences we have cited establish that point without regard to any 
particular theory of consciousness. We may find even that the 
laws of habit are also the laws of reasoning. This relationship 
explains why a group of inteUigent men are spending so much 
time nowadays upon ingenious puzzle-boxes for cats, mice, 
monkeys, guinea-pigs and many other lower creatures. The 
principles learned in those simplified cases enable us to imder- 
stand the fundamental facts of human learning, and the hmnan 
compHcations can then be handled with less bewilderment. 

Principles of Habit-Formation or Learning 

We shall attempt now to summarize more exactly the condi- 
tions of habit-formation or learning, for the sake of their bearing 
on the problem of rationality. 

Contiguity or Conditioned Reflex 

The most fundamental principle we may call simultaneity or 
contiguity. A connection of more or less facility may be estab- 
lished between any two reflex circuits which are active at the 
same time, or closely following one another, so that on the next 
occasion when one is aroused, the impulse will spread to the other 
and arouse it too. This fact is fundamental to the * conditioned 
reflex,' which is in turn, at the bottom of habit-formation. We 
must not think that the neural paths of the instinctive reactions 
are isolated like a number of insulated wires, for the neurons in 
the central nervous system possess wandering branches and are 
so situated that the physiologists consider that "every part of the 
nervous system is in nervous connection with every other part, 



148 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

directly or indirectly." ^ These intertwinings, which make a 
variety of connections possible, are especially numerous in the 
cerebral cortex; hence the importance of the latter 's size as an 
index of intelligence. The connections which exist among them 
all at any one time, however, offer greatly varying degrees of 
resistance to nerve-impulses, and the resistance between the cen- 
tral elements of two previously-estabUshed reflexes is somehow 
lowered and worn down when the two are active at the same time.^ 

Some classical experimental work on the conditioned reflex was 
done by the Russian physiologist Pavlov (German spelling Paw- 
low), twenty years or more ago. He arranged methods of register- 
ing automatically the flow of saliva and gastric juice in the dogs 
upon which his experiments were conducted, and then gave the 
dogs food simultaneously with various other stimuli. The latter 
were lights of different shades of color, tones of different pitches, 
etc. Before its association with food, the light or color of course 
would bring no sahvary reflex, but when the dog had experienced 
the Ught and food together a few times, then the Ught by itself 
would start the flow of sahva. Upon such a secondary or con- 
ditioned reflex, further conditioned reflexes could be built. If the 
Hght previously associated with food and a certain sound-tone 
were given a few times together, with no food at all, then the 
tone by itself would bring the salivary reflexes.^ 

Mankind has always been familiar, of course, with the ' mouth- 
watering ' phenomenon in connection with the sight or thought of 
food; and a multitude of other associative responses have for 
ages been commented on before these exact, quantitative obser- 
vations were thought of. We all acquire responses to whistles, 
bells, pictures, colors, names, flags, scenes, simply by virtue of 

1 Herrick, op. cit., p. 69. Sherrington has made a similar statement. 

2 It is not a matter of absolute simultaneity, since any reflex is active for a period 
of some seconds. Contiguity is therefore the better word. 

' Summary and references in Watson, Behavior, Ch. III. Watson has super- 
intended some similar work, partly on human subjects, in this country, using 
reflexes such as the foot- jerk to build on. See his report in "The Place of the Con- 
ditioned Reflex in Psychology," Psy. Rev., 23: 89-116 (1916). The work in animal 
behavior by Thorndike, Yerkes and others has been to the same effect except that 
habits rather than single reflexes were studied. As Watson says, all habits are made 
up of conditioned reflexes. 



THE LEARNING PROCESS 149 

their having been presented in temporal contiguity with some 
stimulus which was at the time intrinsically interesting to us. 
The grandest example of all, as James Mill knew, is language. 
The spoken words are all just so many conditioned reflexes, ac- 
quired first through simultaneous pointing or other appropriate 
gestures, and later compounded one on another; written language 
is the same process over again, building upon the sound responses. 
Association by similarity is a little different. It means that one 
aspect or element of a former situation, being presented in a 
slightly different context, is responded to in the same manner as 
the first whole situation was responded to, — the differing ele- 
ments being ignored or not responded to at all. The doorstep 
and lock elements call forth the response of reaching the key, in 
the example given by William James. 

Frequency 

This lowered resistance at interconnections of two reflex cir- 
cuits which are simultaneously operative, therefore, is the first 
condition of learning, and the larger the association area the 
greater the possibihties of new associations or learning. The next 
important principle is that of frequency; the resistance at any 
synapse or neuron-junction is worn further away with each pas- 
sage of impulse through it. The metaphor commonly used is a 
road becoming worn smooth by travel. The physiological facts of 
the synapse are still very obscure,^ but there is no question that 
learning is a matter of lessened resistance at these connecting 
points. We must add the ingenious and significant point of Wat- 
son that the successful movement, in trial and error learning, is 
the one which by mathematical probability will most frequently 
occur, since it always ends the series and hence always occurs, 
while any wrong movement will not necessarily occur in each 
trial series.^ 

Persistence of Efforts 

We need now to examine the persistence of effort, and the 
* trying out ' of various responses, which characterizes most 

1 Herrick, op. cit., Ch. Ill; C. S. Sherrington, The Integrative Action of the 
Nervous System (1906), Ch. I. 2 Op cit., Ch. VII. 



150 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

learning-series in their early stages. We are constantly exposed 
to multitudes of stimuli, but we form habits with regard to but 
few. Some of the associations formed by any animal are acci- 
dental, due to the recurring scenes and events which happen in his 
native locality, but most of them are connected with his own 
bodily cycles, — his appetites, which goad him periodically into 
activity until the material is found which chemically quiets them. 
One of these appetites is hunger, and for its satisfaction every 
animal is equipped with intricate food-getting instincts, which 
usually become operative when the food is sensed. Perhaps all 
instincts have a sort of appetite for exercise all their own, when 
their constituent nerves and muscles are well stocked with energy, 
but most of these constituents are used as members of other re- 
sponses, and apparently the ' keep trying ' behavior is not chiefly 
due to the instincts themselves. It is rather due to the continued 
stimulation of appetite from organs which are in want of relief by 
nutrition or outlet of energy. In situations of fear and pugnacity 
there are likely to be continued stimulations from the feared or 
hated object. Such is the case in simple learning by the lower 
animals or by the human infant. 

But in higher learning, when the agent possesses a number of 
complex responses, each composed of several innate affective 
elements and various acquired habits, the mechanism of persist- 
ence on the ' problem ' is much more difficult of analysis. A large 
response like this requires some time for its execution, by nervous 
impulses spreading from the first reflexes to the later ones, and it 
is toward the innervations given by the first reflexes, apparently, 
that we must look for much of the drive toward trying, during the 
selection of later ones. We shall return to this matter later, for we 
believe that to use the same theory in explaining such different 
drives as the ' trying ' of the cat to get food, the student to solve 
a mathematical problem, and the artist to paint pictures, as 
Woodworth ^ and many other students do, is to beg one of the: 
main problems of the learning process. 

^ Op. a/., pp. 120 ff. 



THE LEARNING PROCESS 151 

Multiple Reactions to Same (General) Situation 

Assuming that our organism will keep up some kind of activity 
until he gets food or some other means of stopping his stimula- 
tions, the next question is what determines the kind of attempts 
he will make. We can find in the writings of Thorndike, Yerkes, 
Watson and many other comparative psychologists, records of 
the actual movements made by cats, mice, birds, fish, what not, 
in various kinds of puzzle-boxes which had to be solved for the 
creatures to get food or to avoid punishment. These experiments 
are repeated until the animal learns the trick, and a curve is made 
to show his rate of progress. Somewhat similar records exist for 
the much simpler trials of certain single-celled creatures, in the 
writings of Jennings and a few others.^ 

The animal is stimulated to continual activity by his hunger 
and the sight and smell of food which is beyond the bars of his 
box. The box can be opened by turning a lever, pulling a string, 
digging through sawdust to a hole in the floor, etc. If the animal 
is in a maze, the problem is to avoid the blind alleys. The crea- 
tures respond to the unfamiliar situation by giving their instinc- 
tive and acquired reactions, first to one feature or partial stimulus 
and then to another, often coming back to the same unsuccessful 
attempt. The cat or rat will explore the sides of the cage, claw- 
ing, biting, beating the bars. The rat will instinctively burrow 
through the sawdust in a random direction, and in the maze he 
will often explore every inch of the floor space in the first few 
trials. 

After a number of failures, the right combination of responses is 
finally hit upon, and the food is obtained. On successive oc- 
casions, as the animal is confronted with the same problem, he 
avoids more and more of the unsuccessful acts, and the time in 
which he can cope with this particular situation whenever he 
meets it is greatly reduced. The rat will take seven to eighteen 
minutes to solve a simple puzzle-box on the first trial, but on the 
second trial the time is reduced to two to seven minutes, and on 

^ See Watson, Behavior, Ch. VI, for a summary of many of these results, and 
much illuminating comment on the theory involved. 



152 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

the third to less than a minute. The same animal in the miniature 
maze requires thirty minutes for the first solution, while after a 
few trials he makes the trip in half a minute, ignoring all the false 
turns.^ 

These lower animals, like ourselves, in many cases never learn 
to eUminate all the unnecessary acts, for a useless link is strength- 
ened by frequency just as much as a useful one. The fact that the 
necessary acts always have to be performed before the appetite is 
stilled, whereas the unnecessary do not, gives to the former a 
general preponderating frequency. We find in substantially all 
organisms, then, a multipUcity of reaction possibiUties to the same 
(large) situation to which as a whole, no instinctive response is 
adequate. If any combination of its ready-made reactions can 
succeed in appeasing the appetite, then the creature may learn 
through trial and error to make that successful response when- 
ever the situation is presented to him. 

To consider these multiple reaction possibilities as different 
responses to a single stimulus, however, would be the mark of a 
primitive psychology. We must believe that every stimulation- 
current passes through predetermined channels to produce def- 
inite muscular or glandular tensions, which channels (synapses of 
least resistance) are fixed by heredity or by previous learning. 
As Thorndike says, the vague theories of general nervous over- 
flow are no-wise in line with the other facts of psychology. The 
multiplicity of reactions to the same general situation, then, de- 
pends on two sets of factors, — the differing physiological states of 
the organism, and the number of separate stimuli which the ex- 
ternal situation as a whole contains. We may find varying re- 
sponses to an identical particular stimulus, as Jennings did with 
protozoa, due presumably to varying degrees of fatigue in the 
response mechanisms. After the instinctive response which is 
determined by the most open neural path has been given, if the 
same stimulus is repeated, the resistance at the synapses in this 
circuit is increased, so that the impulse breaks into a path which 
was less open than the first when the first was fresh.^ 

1 Watson, Behavior, pp. 191, 211. 

2 This is an oversimplified version; the facts of fatigue and adaptation in the 
nervous system and sense-organs are quite obscure. But depletion of stored energy 



TEE LEARNING PROCESS 153 

But we are more likely to find the case of responses to different 
stimuli in the same general situation, at least to different com- 
binations of stimuli. As the cat in the cage tries out and fatigues 
one response after another, the stimuli from new aspects of the 
situation — different bars, the lever, different spaces between the 
bars — successively gain admission to her senses and are given 
attention or responded to. In figurative language we say that the 
animal ' tries its repertoire ' of tricks, but this statement, unless 

undoubtedly does alter the balance of power among the responses. Joseph Peterson 
suggests as a principle of learning that, in a baffling situation, several contradictory 
responses are stimulated at once, so that when the first one tried fails to achieve 
success the others are completed without opposition ("Completeness of Response as 
an Explanation Principle in Learning," in Psy. Rev., 23: 153-162 (1916)). 

There are several groups of phenomena commonly described as adaptation 
which have distinct physiological characteristics. Many of them are clear cases of 
habits, with the peculiarity that the native response becomes dissociated from its 
original stimulus, as when an animal learns not to be frightened at a given object as 
the latter becomes ' famihar.' 

A variant of this case is referred to when we say we have come ' not to notice ' the 
clock ticking in our room or the cars going by our doors. Probably we continue to 
respond to these stimuli, but the responses have worn to unconsciousness, as is the 
case with many habits; though it is possible that inhibiting responses have been 
developed which normally prevent stimulation by these recurrent disturbances. 

The adaptation of sense-organs to continued stimulation at a given time, which 
may be found an important factor in learning by causing different responses to 
be successively tried out, has been illuminated recently by some experiments of 
Selig Hecht, described in "The Photic Sensitivity of Ciona Intestinalis," Jour. Gen. 
Physiol., i: 147-166 (1918) and "Adaptation in the Photosensitivity of Ciona In- 
testinalis," Science, N. S., 48: 198-201 (1918). Hecht recorded the reaction-times 
of this simple marine animal to light stimulations of varying intensities for varying 
times and at varying intervals, and the results are strongly suggestive of certain 
inorganic chemical reactions. Light energy apparently decomposes the sensitive 
substance in the animal's ' eye-spot ' into a precursor substance, which reaction 
releases its response; but as by continued stimulation the sensitive substance is de- 
composed faster than it can be reformed, a larger and larger amount of precursor 
must be formed to produce response. Finally an equilibrium is reached when no 
response results from stimulation, and the animal is ' adapted to light.' When it is 
placed in darkness again, the reaction automatically reverses (apparently), as hap- 
pens in several known chemical reactions, and the precursor decomposes into light- 
sensitive compound again. Both adaptation and recovery of sensitivity were proved 
by Hecht to be exactly a function of the time (of stimulation or its absence re- 
spectively), which would be expected if it were a reversible chemical reaction. The 
experiments thus point to a chemical foundation for the Weber-Fechner law. 

Sherrington, however, has shown evidence that fatigue is localized at the 
synapses in the central nervous system, and this explanation may fit the analogous 
phenomenon of adaptations. 



154 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

we are on our guard, harbors a ghost-soul who is directing the 
trying just as a little man would if placed in control of the ani- 
mal's behavior-mechanism. If we can account for the facts with- 
out resort to such an entity, we shall evidently be much further 
on the way toward control of behavior. 

Antagonism and Reinforcement Among Responses 

There is another group of neurological facts which are impor- 
tant in learning, but about which little need be said here, as the 
interpretation of them is not yet clear. We mean the facts of an- 
tagonism and reinforcement between different responses in the 
same body. Some responses involve the use of a common set of 
effectors in the same direction, and so if both are simultaneously 
stimulated, the response will usually be more vigorous than if 
either is given singly, somewhat as a man will ordinarily do more 
for money and honor together than for either alone. But some 
responses use the common effector in opposite directions, which 
means that they cannot both act at once, — the eye caimot move 
to right and to left at the same time. The work of the English 
physiologist Sherrington ^ on these relations between responses 
has attracted universal attention among physiological psy- 
chologists. Holt thinks that stimuli which incite to contradictory 
courses of action simply neutralize each other and are not at- 
tended to,^ but in many cases there is a response in one direction 
and then a sudden shift to the other, as in our interpretation of an 
ambiguous diagram. And so Woodworth includes these facts 
under the head of "Mutual Exclusion of Alternative Responses," 
pointing out that the neural mechanisms are such that different 
responses to the same general situation are tried out one at a 
time, and not on any parallelogram of forces principle.^ 

Mode in which Pleasure-Pain Influences Learning 

Finally we must dissect the influences of pleasantness and un- 
pleasantness on learning. This subject, because of the disputed 
nature of feeling itself, is in a very unsettled state. Common ob- 

1 The Integrative Action of the Nervous System, 1906. 

2 Op. cit., p. 66. 3 op. ciL, Ch. V. 



TEE LEARNING PROCESS 155 

servation has always shown that pleasant rewards tend to form 
and confirm habits, while punishment tends to repel an associa- 
tion or break up a habit. Thorndike, among others, has long held 
this * law of effect ' to be a principle in learning of equal impor- 
tance with the ' law of use,' that is, of frequency, mentioned 
above.^ But as the neurological formulations of this law of effect 
proposed by him and by others have not been entirely plausible, 
a diversity of views among the students has persisted. Hobhouse 
and S. J. Holmes have proposed instead a theory of ' congruity of 
response,' which calls attention to the relations of individual re- 
flexes to each other within the larger response, in order to account 
for such instances as a chick's avoiding a certain variety of cater- 
pillar after experiencing its bitter taste.^ Watson shies at the idea 
of states of consciousness acting upon reflexes, and he renews the 
attempt to explain learning wholly on the principles of contiguity 
and frequency, disregarding pleasure and pain altogether.^ There 
are, of course, many variations of these positions among the 
authorities. 

We have already noticed that Hobhouse's principle is impor- 
tant in learning (it is similar to the point made by Peterson in the 
note above, p. 153), but it throws no light on the influence of affec- 
tion on habit-formation. As Thorndike retorts, a cat can be 
taught to scratch herself in order to get the cage opened, just as 
easily as she can be taught to press the lever, though in the first 
case there is no congruity between the two results. And Watson 
himself gives us data showing that learning is accomplished faster 
when both reward and punishment are used than when either one 
is employed alone (p. 200). 

Conditioned Reflex and Pleasure-Pain 

The whole matter becomes clearer when we adopt the view that 
pleasantness and impleasantness are always the conscious corre- 
lates of instinctive seeking and avoiding reactions, and apply the 
principle of the conditioned reflex or of contiguity. It is curious 

^ See his Original Nature of Man, Chs. IX, XII. 

2 Holmes, article cited, and studies in Animal Behavior (1916) Ch. III. 

3 Behavior, Ch. VII. 



156 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

indeed, how slow the behaviorists have been to work this applica- 
tion into the formulation of learning. Woodworth has at last 
made it in one passage, where he describes the learning of a mouse 
under punishment (Yerkes' experiments) . The mouse can escape 
from its cage through either one of two passages, one passage 
always being marked with a white arch and the other with a black 
arch, these marks being frequently interchanged. When the 
mouse chooses the white-arched passage, he gets an electric 
shock, and by a number of trials he learns to steer clear of the 
white arch wherever it may be. Woodworth explains: 

The avoidance of the pain-giving passage can be understood as a case of 
conditioned reflex; the sight of the passage is quickly followed by the shock, 
which calls out the avoiding reaction, and thus the sight of the passage comes 
itself to evoke the avoiding reaction, while the exploring reaction, incom- 
patible with the avoiding reaction, is shunted out.' 

There is the whole case in a nutshell, yet Woodworth, in his 
more exact chapter on the learning process, refers vaguely to the 
' law of effect,' without in the least indicating how that law 
operates (p. 117). The stock examples, Hobhouse's chick and 
caterpillar, Meynert's child and candle, are identical in principle. 
All students agree that there must be native reactions which cause 
the chick to spit out the caterpillar in the first experience, or the 
child to retract its hand from the flame ; and the possibility of at- 
taching native reflexes to originally indifferent stimuli is well- 
known through the experiments on the conditioned reflex. 
Pavlov's experiments indicate how the 'pleasure' of eating 
'stamps in' the act which has at last attained the food. When 
the dog gets a stimulus which has been experienced in contiguity 
with food a few times, his saliva starts flowing and he is already 
'in imagination' eating the food. This phenomenon means that 
the complex of instinctive food-seeking and eating mechanisms 
comes to be set in action by the originally indifferent object, and 
these mechanisms, like those of the emotional and affective re- 
actions in general, lend a special vigor to the animal's total re- 
sponse. It may be that the vigor of the ' consummatory ' reaction 
helps to establish the successful preceding act more quickly than 

1 Op. cit., p. 88. 



THE LEARNING PROCESS l$J 

on ordinary frequency principles. At any rate, we see that eating- 
reactions or other pleasant (that is, sought-for) results may be 
associated with the visual stimulus of a black-arched alley, or of a 
lever in a cage, etc., and avoiding or unpleasant reactions can be 
transferred to such stimuli as the sight of bad-tasting caterpillars 
or of flames, all on the ordinary principles of the conditioned re- 
flex, and the puzzles of pleasure and pain as motives are in a fair 
way of being solved. 

Herrick gives an anecdote to illustrate the method whereby 
new nerve-paths are formed, which brings out the point con- 
cretely: 

A collie dog which I once owned acquired the habit of roiinding up my 
neighbor's sheep at very unseasonable times. The sight of the flock in the 
pasture (stimulus R-i) led to the pleasurable reaction (E-i) of chasing the 




sheep up to the barnyard. It became necessary to break up the habit at 
once or lose a valuable dog at the hands of an angry farmer with a shotgun. 
Accordingly, I walked out to the pasture with the dog. She at once brought 
in the sheep of her own accord and then ran up to me with every expression 
of canine pride and self-satisfaction, whereupon I immediately gave her a 
severe whipping (stimulus R-2). This called forth the reaction (E-2) of 
running home and hiding in her kennel. The next day (the dog and I having 
meanwhUe with mutual forgiveness again arrived at friendly relations) we 
took a walk in a different direction, in the course of which we imexpectedly 
met another flock of sheep. At sight of these the dog immediately, with no 
word from me, put her tail between her legs, ran home as fast as possible, and 
hid in her kennel. Here the stimulus R-i led not to its own accustomed re- 
sponse, E-i, but to E-2, evidently under the influence of vestigial traces of 
the previous day's experience, wherein the activities of C-i and C-2 were 
related through the associational tract (A,A) passing between them.^ 

1 Op.cit.,T>. 68. 



158 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

Transfer of Emotional Reaction — ' Acquired 

Interests ' 

There is abundant evidence also that emotional reactions are 
constantly being transferred from their original objects to new 
stimuli, on conditioned reflex or association principles; and this 
circumstance indicates that we are correct in assuming emotion 
and feeling to be underlain by similar mechanisms. 

Daily life is full of examples. Who has not felt an unreasoning 
like or dislike toward some person with whom he had no acquaint- 
ance? If the matter were sifted down it would be found that some 
association accounted for it, — the unknown individual perhaps 
resembled another whom the subject had good cause to dislike. 
Who has not felt a thrill of joy or sadness at the sight of some 
insignificant object which had belonged to a dear one, — a little 
pair of shoes, a ring, a photograph? People whose experience with 
telegrams has been chiefly in connection with family deaths ex- 
perience the symptoms of fear whenever a telegram of any sort 
arrives. A faint odor, a snatch of tune, will often reflexly arouse a 
slight vague emotional feeling which we are at loss to account for 
until suddenly we remember the associating links. Fear of the 
dark, as we know, is more than half traceable to foolish tales 
heard in childhood. 

The ' power of association ' is commonly taken for granted, 
like the power of pleasure or pain; but we are concerned to em- 
phasize that these transfers of emotional feeling are not merely 
association of ideas, but are acquired links between stimuli and 
responses. As some of our examples have shown, the ideas or con- 
scious correlates are frequently so abridged that they give us no 
clue to the original bonds of association; but when we realize that 
the neural processes form the more complete and constantly 
active system, we can detect the machinery of association at work 
even when it has become partly unconscious. 

It is only by means of this transfer of affective reactions that we 
acquire * interest ' in the greater part of that variety of objects 
which make up our world. Originally our reactions are adjusted 
to but few stimuli. Supposing that the primary emotions are fear, 



THE LEARNING PROCESS 1 59 

rage, love, elation, subjection, and possibly grief and mirth, the 
fear responses in the human infant are only to the situations of 
falling, sudden noises, and shakes. The rage reactions are only to 
physical hamperings of its movements; ^ elation and subjection 
are chiefly elicited by smiles and frowns, etc. If we allow for the 
maturing of instinctive apparatus in the course of bodily develop- 
ment, we shall have to enlarge this list somewhat, but it will re- 
main smaU compared with the adult human being's actual range 
of emotional stimuli. Then there are apparently a larger group 
of stimuli which instinctively bring the minor affective reactions 
(pleasantness and impleasantness), but this group also is small by 
comparison with the range of our actual sophisticated likes and 
dislikes. 

Throughout life we keep acquiring new inlets to these responses, 
as the adequate stimuli are experienced in close conjunction with 
new stimuli (which may have no causal relation with the first at 
all). The infant in a few months experiences a pleasant complex 
of affective feeling at the sight of his mother, and this is frequently 
followed quickly by a burst of rage if the ' anticipated ' food is not 
forthcoming. The pleasant complex is composed of associations 
with the adequate stimuli of food, soothing motions, pressure and 
smiles, let us say. In the same way the rage response can be at- 
tached to the sight of a disagreeable person who has tormented 
the infant on several occasions; and moreover this rage response 
can be transferred again to anyone who looks somewhat like that 
disagreeable person. A striking point in Watson and Morgan's 
experiments is that infants do not originally fear flashes of bright 
light. They do fear sudden loud noises, and the authors conclude 
that the fearful feehng experienced by most adults at flashes of 
lightning is a conditioned reflex established by the thunder which 
usually follows. 

We can now give a little more exactness to McDougall's con- 
tention that the instinct's * central core ' of emotion remains 
imchanged throughout the alterations of original responses by 
habits which adjust the subject to his special environment. Our 
inner reactions, including glandular secretions, heart action, and 

^ Watson and Morgan, loc. cit. 



l6o ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

so on (which seem to give much of the emotional consciousness), 
do naturally remain intact as the group is transferred from the 
original situation and response to other situations and other re- 
sponses. There is no way of breaking them up. The stimuli in- 
citing us to rage, for example, and our responses thereto, change 
progressively as we grow older. But when we are aroused, by satire 
against ourselves, to satire-reactions of speech or writing, our total 
response still contains the inner changes of rage, which are prepar- 
ing our body for driving its fists and teeth home, and for repairing 
the wounds inflicted by its opponent. These hereditary precau- 
tions, incidentally, interfere somewhat with our effectiveness in 
the satire-combat, for they ' muddle ' our thinking. 

But McDougall does not limit the instinct of pugnacity to these 
inner reactions which remain intact; to him the whole process of 
perception, feeling and expression is the instinct; the emotional 
consciousness is unique and unanalyzable and not accounted for 
by inner sensations; and this conscious core operates on the outer 
world with some discretion, partially by habits acquired through 
the old laws of association of ideas and by the magical efficacy of 
pain and pleasure. On all these points, as will be gathered from 
the previous discussion, we beheve he has fallen into the error of 
pseudo-simplicity, though in the most general way his account is 
a true one. 

Foregoing Illuminates Shand's Doctrine of ' Sen- 
timent ' AND Freudian ' Ubertragung ' 

There is another doctrine which McDougall has popularized, 
to which this scheme of the transfer of emotional reactions sup- 
plies more definiteness and accuracy, — that is Shand's concep- 
tion of the ' sentiment.^ Sentiment is the technical term given by 
these authors to a system of primary instincts and emotions or- 
ganized by experience around a single object. It is clear, as they 
point out, that some of the instincts of practically any person 
come to be aroused in behalf of some other person or of some 
thing, in much the same manner that they were originally aroused 
in behalf of the agent's own body. Love is a common sentiment, 

1 McDougall, op. cit., Ch. V; A. F. Shand, Foundations of Character. 



THE LEARNING PROCESS l6l 

as distinguished from the original passion or emotion. A mother, 
for instance, by her experiences with her child and thoughts of it 
before its birth, comes not only to display uistinctive parental 
behavior toward it but also to experience fear when the child is in 
danger, anger when it is threatened or disparaged, elation when 
it is praised, and so on. A man may also acquire a sentiment of 
love for another man, or for such an object as a dog; and we are 
well aware that the sentiment of hate is possible. In the latter 
case the hater's instincts are aroused inversely with reference to 
the situation of the object, — he is elated when the hated object is 
despised, angry when it prospers, disgusted and angry in its 
presence, etc. 

Ideal sentiments are of the same nature, so that for the sake of 
justice or rehgion or patriotism men have feared and exulted and 
died. The original, naively egoistic instincts may thus be or- 
ganized by means of habits to dispose the agent's energy in any 
altruistic cause within the limits of educability. McDougall 
traces at length the development of the "self-regarding senti- 
ment," which refers to the organization of instincts with regard to 
the agent's own body and social environment. 

James had already made much the same point in his discus- 
sion of the various selves. 

Our immediate family is a part of ourselves. . . . When they die a part of 
our very selves is gone. If they do anything wrong, it is our shame. If they 
are insulted, our anger flashes forth as readily as if we stood in their place.^ 

Our home, our work, are the subjects of similar instinctive reac- 
tions on our part, he says. 

The Freudian school has given attention to a different kind of 
' sentiment ' than these British psychologists discuss, — namely, 
the abnormal cases which are prominent in insanity. Displaced 
' affects,' usually of a sexual nature, play a leading role in the 
Freudian discussions, especially in Freud's earlier and formative 
period of the Studies in Hysteria. The hysterical person suffers 
anesthesia, hallucinatory pains or other symptoms, the origin of 
which is quite unknown to him. The psychoanalyst, by attention 
to the patient's personal history, dreams, and free associations, 
* Briefer Course, p. 178. 



1 62 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

discovers that the trouble originated through association with 
some unfortunate love affair, perhaps connected with a tragedy 
of illness and death. We can better consider the Freudian system 
as a whole, and the general problem of * sentiment-building ' 
after we have discussed the reasoning process and the develop- 
ment of personality; but it is to be remarked here that a great 
deal of the Freudian data on what they call tjbertragung or trans- 
fer of affect, is translatable into physiological psychology in terms 
of conditioned emotional reflexes,^ and is therefore of much poten- 
tial value in determining the limits of human emotional educa- 
bility. For this matter of limits — to what extent can desirable 
and reliable * sentiments ' be manufactured by social control? — 
is the outstanding problem suggested by the doctrine of the senti- 
ment. We shall see what generalities can as yet be hazarded on 
the subject when we have finished our survey of the motive- 
building process. 

1 Dr. F. L. Wells, in a note, "Von Bechterew and tJbertragung," Jour. Phil., 
Psy. and Sci. Methods, 13: 354-356 (1916) points out that Bechterew's hints bring 
the Freudian "transference" and the physiologist's "conditioned reflex" together. 
Watson develops the point in "Behavior and the Concept Mental Disease," Ibid., 
pp. 589-597. 



CHAPTER XII 

LEARNING, REASONING AND RATIONALITY 

Learning Process Believed to Explain Reasoning 

By our account of the original behavior-apparatus and of the 
methods by which additional apparatus is acquired (learning), we 
have to a considerable extent described the nature of intelligence. 
Intelligence means ability to adapt oneself to unfamiliar cir- 
cumstances, that is, to achieve his purposes in situations for 
which he possesses no completely fashioned instinctive or habit- 
ual response-mechanisms. We have seen in what combinations of 
simple processes this ' ability ' consists in its lower stages. 

But doubtless it seems to the reader that we have left out just 
the essence of human intelligence, or at least of human rationaHty. 
Between the cat solving the puzzle-box, it will be said, and the 
statesman guiding a nation, there is an unexplained gap. If we 
answer that the difference is in the original instincts and organs, 
especially in the relative brain masses which limit the possible 
range of learning — that is, in the extent of possible habit- 
formation — we shall very likely be told that over and above this 
difference, the phenomena of thought make a fundamental dis- 
tinction. Men do not respond merely to immediate stimuli; their 
behavior is largely governed by ideas, many of which represent 
future, remote, and non-existent objects. It is characteristic of 
the human being that he solves his problems in thought. Some 
strong interest takes possession of him, an interest which as like as 
not bears no discernible relation to his instincts or to pain or 
pleasure, and this interest determines the general direction of his 
thoughts for days or hours. It selects and rejects ideas according 
to the man's vague knowledge that they are or are not taking him 
toward his goal. When his thoughts wander, this warm interest 
brings him back to relevant considerations. Finally he has rea- 
soned out the solution which permits him to succeed in some new 

163 



164 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

and untried practical enterprise. A man who is put in a puzzle- 
box will not paw around at random until accidentally he operates 
the lever; he will sit down and appraise the situation and presently 
infer that the lever is the most promising point of attack. 

In spite of the plausibility of this line of argument, there are 
good reasons to believe that it is based on illusory appearances, 
and that * trial and error ' learning and reasoning differ not in 
nature but only in the instinctive and habitual reactions involved, 
more especially in the complexity of the association tracts. 
' Complexity ' here means nothing more than the number of 
neuron connections involved within the central nervous system, 
chiefly in the cerebral cortex. 

Trial and Error in Imagination 

Let us first consider the differences which ideas, imagination or 
thought make. Suppose that all thought is, as the hypothesis we 
have mentioned assumes, a series of imaginal revival of sensa- 
tions (with some admixture of actual sensations), and that any 
sensation or its image is always correlated with the activity of a 
certain reflex circuit or combination of circuits. In addition to 
the many other grounds which commend some hj^othesis of this 
general nature to a number of modern psychologists, we have 
seen that support is afforded it by the parallelism between 
muscular habit and association of ideas. We know that when two 
responses have occurred closely together in time on several oc- 
casions, the recurrence of one brings about some activity in the 
other. How much activity is thus aroused in the second depends 
on a number of circumstances, including the strength of the asso- 
ciation and the other contemporaneous activities of the body. 
Under conditions such as Pavlov provided for his dogs, the second 
response was active on the overt level, it was a conditioned reflex 
which could be easily observed by the onlooker from the gross 
behavior of the dog. 

But in our own life we know that the recurrence of the first of 
the associated responses often arouses the second only as an idea, 
not to the extent of overt behavior. James' absent-minded man 
may only think of getting out his key when the response of per- 



LEARNING, REASONING AND RATIONALITY 165 

ceiving a doorstep occurs. We step out of doors and discover that 
it is raining. If we have our umbrella, up it goes from force of 
habit. But if we have neglected to provide one, we only think of 
having one, we imagine its appearance and probably the feel of 
raising it. According to the above general kind of h5qDothesis, 
many of the same reflexes are operative in either the overt or the 
ideal response, the difference being in the degree of activity or 
muscular tension. Similarly with all other imaginal or thought 
processes: they are believed to depend on associations with some 
context of actual sensations or responses, though by short-cutting 
from one idea to another without reviving all the intervening 
experiences, the course of imagination makes combinations of 
images which do not as a whole correspond to any reality. 

Returning now to the cat in the cage; has she any ideas? The 
psychologists dispute about that question, but all agree that she 
forms conditioned reflexes (learns habits), the like of which, as we 
have seen, probably imderHe all our own ideas. So that when 
Pavlov's dog secretes saliva at the sight of food, or of the red light 
associated with food, and makes other responses characteristic of 
eating, we may suppose without making ourselves utterly irre- 
sponsible that he ' imagines ' himself tasting the food, and imag- 
ines it so strongly that some of his reflexes have become fully 
active. His experiences may well be comparable to ours in similar 
circumstances. In any educable animal, a stimulus which has 
been experienced several times in connection with food, sex 
gratification, liberation from confinement, etc., will ' catch the 
animal's attention ' when his physiological state is suitable, be- 
cause the responses of attention to it and of satisfying the appe- 
tite become active together and reinforce one another. 

In similar fashion the animal ' remembers ' unpleasant effects 
connected with a given stimulus. We have seen that he learns to 
avoid the most conventional signs connected by contiguity with 
punishment (e. g., the mouse and the white-arched passage), 
presumably because the instinctive avoiding reaction is aroused 
by the attention response. But when the mouse avoids the white- 
arched passage after learning the trick, or when the chick steers 
clear of the nasty caterpillar, we do not see them going overtly 



1 66 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

through all the original responses of pain. Rather, we may as- 
sume, the aversion is chiefly in * idea ' ; the mouse ' feels disgust 
at the sight of ' that gate; somewhat as we do at thistles or other 
things which have borne witness to our unpleasant experiences. 

There are other lines of evidence which have convinced many 
students of animal behavior that some lower animals have ideas, 
in the more complex sense of carrying out a chain of responses in 
imaginal terms. Dogs, for instance, seem to be disturbed by bad 
dreams; and they are said sometimes to make gestures to draw 
their masters' attention to some situation they have discovered, 
and so on. Yerkes recently found that a young orang-utan, after a 
number of trials on the problem of choosing the first door to the 
left out of a varying number of open doors, suddenly mastered 
the trick. Because of the similarity of this learning curve to the 
curves of human subjects on rational problems, Yerkes believes it 
indicates ' ideation ' in the orang-utan.^ 

In our opinion, it is not necessary to attribute complex ideal 
solutions to the lower animals in order to assume that they have 
' ideas,' because one imaginal step like the (incipient) shrinking 
from an object of painful experience contains the germ of thought. 
If we had an accumulation of cases in which lower animals had, 
under careful observation, solved problems of several stages with- 
out having recourse to the expected series of overt experiments, 
we should say that unquestionably the trial and error had been 
accomplished in imagination. 

Now what has all this to do with human rationaHty? The 
answer is to be found in the concluding sentence above : reason- 
ing is just ' trial and error accomplished in the imagination.' And 
not altogether in imagination either, for the crucial step in all 
reasoning is proving its validity by some operation on the en- 
vironment, by some objective test or trial, which may prove the 
solution to be an * error.' We do not press the point of animal 
consciousness, for we must remember that there are numerous 
unconscious habits operating constantly in human beings. We 
do not press the point that the physiological basis of all thought is 

* R. M. Yerkes, The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes: A Study of Ideational 
Behavior (Behavior Monograph No. 12), 1916, p. 68. 



LEARNING, REASONING AND RATIONALITY 167 

probably the reflexes correlated with images. But we develop the 
matter through these stages of speculation in order to join hands 
with the psychologists of reasoning, who on introspective and 
gross behavior evidence, are coming more and more to consider 
reasoning as having the same fundamental character as the learn- 
ing of any motor trick, whether by lower animal or by human 
being. ^ 

But the difference in detail and in common-sense apprehension 
is so great that we must attempt to analyze the mechanisms of 
reasoning, in order that this alleged identity between the two may 
become at all plausible. In the present state of knowledge we 
cannot demonstrate the identity very completely, yet we believe 
a high degree of probability can be established. 

Psychological Process of Reasoning Distinguished 
FROM Logical Statement 

First we must make the distinction, now frequently pointed 
out, between the psychological process of reasoning and the formal 
statement of a chain of reasoning after the problem has been 
solved. 

1 For instance Woodworth: "In general, then, the process gone through in 
original activity has the form of varied reaction and trial and error, with some de- 
gree of control and generalization. The process may be restated thus: The in- 
dividual is confronted by a situation to which he attempts to react but meets with 
obstruction. This stimulates him to exploration and varied attempts at escape. The 
situation, being complex, offers many points of attack, many features which, being 
observed, suggest or evoke reactions in accordance with past experience. The 
difficulty is, to find the right feature to react to, or, in other words, so to perceive 
the situation as to be able to bring our existing equipment into successful use" 
{Op. cit., p. 143). And Thorndike: "Thinking and reasoning do not seem to be in 
any useful sense opposites of automatism, custom, or habit, but simply the action of 
habits in cases where the elements of the situation (problem) compete and cooperate 
notably." — "The Psychology of Thinking in the Cases of Reading," Psy. Rev., 
24: 233 (1917). And Joseph Peterson: "Rational learning does not seem to differ 
from the usual trial and error learning in any important manner except in the ex- 
plicitness with which the various elements in the situation are reacted to and re- 
tained for subsequent use." — "Experiments in Rational Learning," Psy. Rev., 
24: 466 (191 8). The treatments of reasoning by James and Titchener lean strongly 
in this direction, and Pillsbury and Dewey, in the reference cited below, emphasize 
the complete dependence of the process of reasoning on the laws of association of 
ideas, which, as we have seen, are simply the laws of habit. 



1 68 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

The process of reasoning is not a matter of syllogisms, but of 
successive guesses at the solution, which guesses are dictated by 
the strongest associations with the special aspect of the problem 
which, for the moment, receives attention or is responded to. The 
principles of logic, however, the present writer believes to be very 
closely related to the physiological processes of behavior, in the 
manner pointed out by the old associationists, so that we do not 
consider the above distinction to be a sharp one. The cat's re- 
sponses to a group of stimuli which are common to all dogs, for 
instance, amounts to an ability in the cat to classify other ani- 
mals as dogs or not-dogs. The lower creatures' logic, as well as 
our own, often leads them into serious practical dangers, and, as 
James pointed out, our finer discrimination or nicer adaptation of 
responses to varying situations has given us mastery over the 
other animals, — has given us power, in short, to deceive them. 
The mouse learns a response to the object cheese, but often does 
not learn in time to discriminate the varying contexts of cheese so 
as to avoid traps. The process of induction corresponds closely to 
the learning of responses in separate cases; deduction is a matter 
of hitting on the essential aspect or label of a new case so as to use 
an old trick that is adequate. Mice and rats soon learn to grasp 
the essential aspect of many varieties of trap, and so to give the 
adequate response of avoidance to them all. 

But whatever the relation of principles of logic to principles of 
psychology, it is clear enough from anyone's experience that our 
efforts to solve a rational problem do not occur in the order that 
our demonstration of proof follows after we have hit on the solu- 
tion. What we do is try out successively our established reactions 
until the stimulation which keeps us trying is stopped by a suc- 
cessful combination of reactions. 

Elements of Reasoning Process: Ambiguity 

To reason, we repeat, is essentially to use an old trick or a com- 
bination of old ones, to meet a new difficulty. A boy on the farm, 
let us say, sees a rabbit scamper into a brushpile. The lad has 
never dealt with the particular situation before, but he has killed 
rabbits and his hunting proclivities (composed of instinctive and 



LEARNING, REASONING AND RATIONALITY 169 

habitual elements) are aroused. He brings to bear the various 
methods of attack which different details of the strange situation 
suggest, either overtly in action, or in imaginal terms, that is, in 
thought. He whistles for his dog, looks for a stone or club, con- 
siders burning the brushpile or merely beating it, and even thinks 
of trusting that the rabbit will stay there while he goes for a more 
effective weapon. 

The strangeness and complexity of the situation, in each case, 
illustrates Dewey's statement that the provocation to reasoning 
is always an ambiguity, like a fork in an unfamiliar road. There 
is no predominant response which is immediately called out, but 
there are several responses which tend to be weakly aroused be- 
cause of the ambiguity. As soon as the agent begins to attend to 
specific features of the matter, his established responses are un- 
equivocally aroused and are tried out successively, either actually 
or ideally; but to the situation as it first presents itself, the total 
attitude is one of inhibition and bewilderment because there is no 
ready-made method of dealing with it. 

A purely intellectual problem presents the same kind of am- 
biguity. A 'problem' such as: Find the square root of 2, involves 
not reasoning but only habits, unless the student is not thoroughly 
familiar with the necessary procedure. If he is not sure how to 
carry it through, it means just that the situation is ambiguous, 
several fines of action seeming to have about equal chances of 
success. 

Besides this character of ambiguity, there are three other ele- 
ments in the reasoning process which are stressed by the authori- 
ties, namely, (2) the suggestion of one proposed solution after 
another, (3) the testing of each solution-candidate imtil one 
proves successful, and (4) the purpose or drive which keeps the 
agent trying. The last-named element is first in time and impor- 
tance, but we prefer to treat of it last. Assuming for the moment, 
then, a dominant purpose which incites the reasoner to continual 
action, which limits the range of his guesses and finally is set at 
rest by a certain kind of success, let us consider the other two 
elements further. 



lyo ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

Suggestion of Tentative Solution by Association 

The next step in the process is the trying out of a solution which 
has ' suggested itself ' by virtue of the associations connected 
with a particular aspect of the problem. We have seen that the 
animal in the puzzle-box shifts attention from one part of the box 
to another, and gives the reactions which are most firmly con- 
nected with these various stimuli. In mental reasoning also, we 
shift attention from one part of the problem to another, and use 
the associations which are called up by each feature. If we are 
presented with a mechanical puzzle, we notice first one notch or 
partial shape, then another, and follow up the suggestions which 
these different earmarks severally and jointly arouse by virtue of 
our past experiences. That is, we act out a habitual response, 
either with our fingers or in imagination, first to one and then to 
another stimulus. 

These tentative solutions or suggestions constitute the crux of 
the whole rational process. They are the variations from which 
the conditions of external nature select the right response, if the 
right one is ever suggested at all. It is worth while, therefore, to 
emphasize the complete determination of such suggestions by the 
laws of association or of habit-formation. Pillsbury says. 

If one will but follow through a chain of reasoning, it will be observed 
that the elements are connected by the same laws of association that are 
operative in the simplest recall.^ Dewey concurs: Given the facts AB CD 
on one side and certain individual habits on the other, suggestion occurs 
automatically.^ 

The reasoning of a woodsman and of a city dweller on the situa- 
tion of being lost in the woods will differ, therefore, chiefly on 
account of the differences in their established habits. The con- 
jecturing, from a track in the snow, of an animal of certain appear- 
ance, as Pillsbury points out, will be a mere perception for the 
guide, whereas to the city man it will be a process of inference. 
The difference is clearly due to their varying habits; the former 
has learned the exact response to the stimulus of that-shaped foot- 
print, but the latter must learn it by a kind of trial and error. 

"• W. B. Pillsbury, The Psychology of Reasoning (1910), p. 3. 
2 J. Dewey, How We Think (1910), p. 85. 



LEARNING, REASONING AND RATIONALITY 171 

Between mere perceptions and complex chains of reasoning, 
there are the gradations of judgments, appreciations, and infer- 
ences, as the same author shows. ' Unconscious inferences,' which 
Mr. Wallas and others have demonstrated to be so important in 
social life, are either habitual responses, containing several links 
which operate without giving explicit consciousness, or are single 
conditioned reflexes into which the inference is read by the ob- 
server. The guide, that is to say, may have seen the footprint 
previously only when the animal was also on hand to be compared 
with it, so that there is no inference about his recognition, only an 
association. Similarly, if people buy Jones' soap rather than 
Smith's because Jones is the heavier advertiser, it is not neces- 
sary to assume much inference at the bottom of the process. The 
advertisements associate a fringe of pleasant feeling about the 
concept of Jones' soap, and this vague fringe is enough to deter- 
mine the customer's preference, unless there are stronger coun- 
ter-attractions, such as associations of poor quality and high price 
with the soap of this same Jones. It is idle to dispose of the old 
associationist philosophers, therefore, by making out of them men 
of straw who believe every human action to be based on conscious 
reasonings, going carefully through all the implicit steps. Such, 
however, is one of the favorite methods of the anti-intellectualists. 

There do, indeed, seem to be innate differences in reasoning 
ability, not determined by mere range of pertinent associations. 
James spoke of sagacity, in addition to learning, as requisite for 
good reasoning. We can hardly guess what the physiological 
differences are which make one mind a single-track affair, slow 
and uncertain in shifting attention from one feature of the prob- 
lem, or from trying a wrong method, to other more promising 
aspects, while another mind is fertile in suggestions because it 
does explore thoroughly the whole situation. General reasoning 
power is to be cultivated to some extent, says Dewey, by acquisi- 
tion of the habit of carefully diagnosing any new problem before 
following out a particular clue. Such a careful examination will 
lead both to a larger variety of automatically presented sugges- 
tions, and to a quicker trying out of the suggestions after the 
diagnosis is finished. 



172 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

Testing of Proposed Solutions 

This third element, the testing of proposed solutions and selec- 
tion of the right one, must now engage our attention. Some such 
process must occur for every guess, though we may not be con- 
scious that these separate steps do exist. What constitutes the 
success or failure of a tentative solution is clear enough in its 
larger aspect; it brings or does not bring realization of the pur- 
pose behind the reasoning, by a suitable physical operation on the 
environment. Success to the cat is getting the food and stopping 
its hunger; failure is completing the ' suggested ' response without 
stopping the hunger. Our own reasoning is often tested in this 
way; we see that the puzzle is or is not put into the desired form, 
or we do or do not reach our destination. But the test with which 
we stop satisfied (temporarily), in many chains of reasoning is not 
a practical one. It is merely compatibility of the new solution 
with several other accepted principles. 

The psychologists of reasoning dismiss this case with the phrase 
"or the solution is believed to be adequate for practical success." ^ 
We shall try, however, to show its relation to the more simple 
cases. 

This wholly introspective test of a suggestion's adequacy, 
means that the * implications ' of the tentative guess have been 
* mentally ' explored, and the harmony or disharmony of these 
consequences with the implications of other accepted principles is 
recognized. A man suspects the fidelity of his watch, for example^ 
and wonders if it has stopped an hour or so and then started again. 
If no reliable timepiece is available, he has recourse to testing the 
implications of the time denoted by the watch with the implica- 
tions of other signs, such as the sun's position, the state of his 
appetite, the sounds in the distance and so on. He may be con- 
vinced thereby that his watch is correct, but the objective test 
comes later when he does or does not make his appointments on 
time. In mathematics the process of proof is wholly a matter of 
comparing implications. 

In such a logical demonstration, the implications or conse- 
quences which follow from certain propositions are by many 

* See Pillsbury, op. ciL, p. lo. 



LEARNING, REASONING AND RATIONALITY 173 

logicians believed to proceed from an impersonal, ultra-mundane 
necessity, while the consequences from more practical proposi- 
tions, such as of the time of day, are supposed to be due to natural 
law of the world as it happens to exist. But there is still a good 
case to be made for Hume's doctrine that our acquaintance with, 
and belief in, these logical uniformities, these ' eternal verities,' 
is the result merely of invariable practical associations. The 
chicken whose master feeds him day after day, as Bertrand Rus- 
sell says,^ comes soon to * believe ' that the process will go on 
forever, though the time comes when the master wrings the bird's 
neck. It is clear, says Russell, that more refined views on the 
uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken. 

Our own beliefs in logical necessity and natural laws appear 
to differ from such a belief as this, first in being borne out by a 
greater number of instances without contradiction, and also in 
being supported by a larger number of congruous associations. 
Our facilities for accumulating instances beyond the range of our 
immediate bodily stimuli makes our greater assurance possible. 
Many logical propositions, to be sure, such as those concerning 
irrational nmnbers, have no meaning in existential terms, but still 
these propositions may be wholly composed of propositions de- 
rived from our race's actual bodily experience. The question, of 
course, is a large metaphysical one. 

Our concern here is simply to suggest that the process of prov- 
ing out tentative suggestions in the more subtle cases of reasoning, 
where the test is only congruity with other established principles 
and their implications, may plausibly be reduced to an acting out, 
at the low tension of imagination, of our previously established 
responses, on principles identical with those of the simplest learn- 
ing. Some instinctive elements doubtless remain in all these es- 
tablished responses, but for the most part they have been learned, 
they are habitual. So the reasoner acts out imaginatively his new 
supposition according to the associations it automatically pro- 
duces, and if the ' solution ' is incorrect, presently he will be 
stopped by the innervation of contradictory responses. His first 
guess, let us say, leads him through successive consequences 

1 The Problems of Philosophy. 



174 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

finally to the proposition that there are 400 degrees in a circle. 
Here his progress is thwarted by the more strongly established 
response that there are 360 degrees in a circle. The proposition 
asserted by the unreliable watch that the shadows point north at 
10 o'clock is quenched by the better established response (belief) 
that the shadows point north at noon. Thus all cases of unsuccess- 
ful trials in reasoning may, perhaps, reduce to the type of baffled 
physical movement (and our feelings in such instances often do 
indicate this correspondence), due to the incompatibility of our 
suggestion with the facts of the environment. 

This formulation of the behavior-basis of abstract thought is 
certainly bald and premature, and is doubtless unconvincing. 
Our information concerning the mechanisms of the process is still 
slight. There are, however, several commonly recognized facts of 
experience which lend support to the above account. 

The great role played by language must always be borne in 
mind. Words are short cuts through action and through percep- 
tion. As we have seen, language is a system of habits, or of com- 
pounded conditioned reflexes. Words are always learned by being 
heard or seen in close temporal contiguity with their ' meaning,' 
which is a setting of other experiences of the learner's body. After 
a small capital of words is acquired, other words are built upon 
them as meaning, and so the process goes on indefinitely to higher 
and higher abstractions. In connection with every word of our 
own vocabulary, however, there are vague sensations — visual, 
auditory, kinesthetic — which come into consciousness with it 
and make up part of its meaning, and the peculiar pattern of this 
sensation-complex is due to our special experiences with that 
word.^ But though there is something of idiosyncrasy in the 
meaning of any word to each one of us, the essential feature of 
words is that they identify situations which are experienced in 
common by all people. The sound "Fire!" will therefore start a 
panic in a theatre nearly as effectively as the sight of actual flame 
and smoke; or if a man says, "There was a fire in a theatre," or 
"I was in a train wreck," he conveys to us a complex of images 
which it would take him hours to act out in pantomime or 
sketches. 

1 Cf . Titchener, Experimental Psychology of the Thought Process. 



LEARNING, REASONING AND RATIONALITY 175 

Words are shorthand both for stimuli — objects, qualities, re- 
lations — which have been analyzed out of the rough mass of the 
environment by our ancestors, and also for the innumerable re- 
sponses to those stimuH which our race has gradually learned. It 
is largely to these ready-made discriminations from the crude 
situations we meet, of the essential features, and to the ready- 
made responses which have been learned painfully before our 
time, that we owe our superiority to the brutes. Of course, our 
absorption of this ready-made equipment, as well as the original 
inventions of details in it, were possible only because of the large 
association-tracts in our brains and other physical pecuUarities.^ 
So habitual is the use of words to us that our thoughts are usually 
predominantly composed of images of uttering or hearing speech 
(kinesthetic-auditory imagery) . 

Now human reasoning is carried on largely by means of words; 
and because of their condensation of experience, they save us 
much time and effort. With a certain accumulation of concepts, 
for example, men can divide land approximately equally by 
counting the furrows made in plowing it, but with a larger stock 
of concepts they can divide it accurately by means of a few meas- 
urements and calculations. So that the trains of language which 
the abstract reasoner rattles off at the low tension of imagination 
are really verbal habits, which habits are constantly pruned and 
checked by their adequacy in leading to action and perception. 

The next fact which lends support to the conclusion that ab- 
stract reasoning is a matter of habits is that in vast numbers of 
cases a solution reached and apparently proved in thought is 
found inadequate when it is applied to operations on the outer 
world. If the problem is even moderately complex, few of us can 
carry all its elements completely through the reasoning ' in our 
mind.' There is a simple experiment, for example (used by Holt 
in his classes), in which one end of a band of paper is turned one 
hundred and eighty degrees and then the two ends are pieced 
together, leaving that half-twist in the circular band. The ob- 

1 There is an illuminating article along these lines by the physiologist Ralph S. 
Lillie, "What is Purposive and InteUigent Behavior from the Physiological Point of 
View?" Jour. Phil. Psy., etc., 12: 589-610 (1915). 



176 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

servers then predict what paper figures will result from cutting 
lengthwise completely through this band. Few observers can 
carry all phases of the matter through their calculations so as to 
predict that there will still be but one band with a complete twist 
in it, not two bands. Similarly Pillsbury mentions a skilled 
maker of scientific instruments who finds that he can hardly ever 
carry out his paper plans completely in actual constructions, some 
obstacle has always been overlooked. The superiority of this final 
objective test by immutable natural conditions, over mere sub- 
jective confidence in our ' knowledge,' is the half-truth back ot 
the good old distinction between theory and practice. 

This point that subjective conviction of the validity of one's 
reasoning is not a final proof, is elaborated by the Freudians under 
the captions ' logic- tight compartments of the mind,' and ' ra- 
tionalization.' Everyone, they think, maintains full belief in 
each of several contradictory principles, without realizing the 
contradiction; and in some varieties of insanity this blindness is 
absurdly exaggerated. The patient who believes herself a queen 
still cheerfully scrubs the floors, not perceiving the discrepancy 
between the two propositions.^ 

If such a discrepancy is dimly realized, as by a man who is mean 
in business while professing himself a Christian, ' rationaliza- 
tion ' is frequently resorted to. This man tells himself that charity 
begins at home, or that other people are well qualified to look out 
for their own interests, and so on. That "The wish is father to 
the thought" in multitudinous instances has been patent to wise 
men of all times. The tendency extends from the child whose 
predilection for * make-believe ' seems due to actual difficulty in 
distinguishing the imaginary from the real, down to the most 
cold-blooded and logical scientist, who is occasionally unable to 
notice facts which contradict a favorite theory. Darwin remarked 
that it is well for anyone to write down immediately any such 
contradictory facts which he does observe, since otherwise they 
are likely to be forgotten. 

We shall consider in a moment whether the mysterious ap- 
paratus of the * subconscious ' is necessary to account for these 

* B. Hart, The Psychology of Insanity, pp. 81, 82 (1916). 



LEARNING, REASONING AND RATIONALITY 177 

psychological phenomena; but at any rate the general fact seems 
clear that introspective certainty is not as conclusive a proof of 
correct reasoning as is successful operation on the environment, 
which favors the hypothesis that abstract or wholly mental rea- 
soning is just trial and error (of habits) carried on at the low 
tension of imagination, with the result that proposed solutions are 
tested only by their compatibihty or conflict with our more 
fi.rmly-estabUshed habits. Our real knowledge is a system of 
habits which at any time can be successfully used in practice, 
such as the assertion that two and two make four. 

The Purpose, Interest or Drive, which Keeps 
Subject Trying 

It remains to investigate the one remaining element of the 
reasoning situation, the element which appears first in point of 
time, the purpose or interest or drive, which keeps the subject 
trying and determines what will be the right solution. It is not 
difficult to describe this element in introspective terms, and this 
is as far as the theorists of reasoning usually get. A purpose 
arises in consciousness, which may be anything from finding a 
postage stamp to working out the problems of the Peace Con- 
ference, and the ' attraction ' of this interest keeps our thoughts 
upon matters which are relevant to it until a solution is found. 
Such was Hobbes' account of the process of definitely directed 
thought, as contrasted with idle reverie, and modem psychology 
has not greatly unproved on it. The writings on definitely di- 
rected thought and purposiveness denote this directive entity 
as Aufgabe (the term of the German writers Ach and Watt), 
* determining tendencies,' ' cortical set ' and many other terms 
such as apperception and attention.^ Whatever the entity is, it 
determines that certaui ' relevant ' associations will be called up 
rather than others which are equally attached to the cue which 
receives attention. Show a student two numerals arranged thus: 
4, and according as you say "Add," or "Multiply," or "Sub- 
tract," different trains of associations will be started in the stu- 
dent's mind by these black marks. 

^ See references in Titchener, Experimental Psychology of the Thought Process; 
also PHlsbury, op. cit., p. 12. 



178 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

Titchener is emphatically of the opinion that this ' determining 
tendency ' or ' cortical set ' is a complex of physiological processes, 
the resultant of the agent's personal history, some of the proc- 
esses operating unconsciously, presimiably according to the 
ordinary ' law of decay ' of consciousness which characterizes all 
habit. He believes, as everyone not an interactionist must, that 
there are definite neural mechanisms back of all these purposes, 
impulses to action, and progressive trends of thought, but like 
other authorities he does not undertake to exhibit these mech- 
anisms specifically. We shall attempt, however, to point out how 
this factor also may be interpreted in terms of instinct- and habit- 
mechanisms, thus reducing them as nearly as we can to the 
common denominator of the nervous system. So long as we con- 
fess ourselves able to give only an introspective report of the 
* selective agency ' in reasoning, a redoubtable stronghold is left 
to the mystics. 

We have used the word ' purpose ' indifferently for the deter- 
mining tendencies in progressive thought, in reasoning, and in 
purposive behavior. The students of these varieties of the subject 
are making it clear that the Aufgabe in thought, and the purpose 
in any teleological action, present exactly the same character- 
istics.^ The ' set,' whether for the solution of a mental problem or 
for such a practical task as the fLnding of a stamp, brings up sug- 
gestions which are more relevant to the problem than others 
would be which are equally associated with the situation, and it 
determines what will be a solution. 

Some of these authorities are citing the * keep trying ' of the 
hungry animal as a typical case, assuming that there must be an 
Aufgabe in every trial and error, or learning, situation (e. g., 
Professor Perry in the article last cited) . It may be remembered 
that we have already objected to Woodworth's lumping together 
the striving of the hungry animal with the efforts of a student to 
solve a mathematical problem. We too believe there is a funda- 
mental similarity among all these cases, but the human deter- 

^ R. B. Perry, "Docility and Purpose," Psy. Rev., 25: 1-20 (1918) and other 
articles on purpose; H. C. Warren, "A Study of Purpose," Jour. Phil. Psy., etc., 
13: 5~2S, 29-49; S7~72 (1916); Lillie, op. cit.; Woodworth, op. cit. 



LEARNING, REASONING AND RATIONALITY 179 

mining tendencies (in intellectual purposes) seem so different 
physiologically from the hunger impulse that the point is a critical 
one. As we have already remarked, the ' striving ' of an instinct 
or appetite is accounted for by the continued impact of a rela- 
tively small group of stimuli, — the ' gnawings ' of hunger, set up 
by mechanical or chemical conditions within the body, the smell 
of food, and so on. 

But where does the stimulation come from in such endeavors 
as hunting a stamp or hunting a house? Any purpose which an 
adult human being can entertain consists of thousands of reflexes 
integrated into a single system, and each reflex is connected with 
a multitude of other purpose-systems, so that the chance of our 
responses being led off into irrelevant bypaths of other associa- 
tions is large. Again, it is rather implausible, that such a mechan- 
ical combination of reflexes as we must consider a purpose to be, 
can select new responses which have not previously been con- 
nected with it, and can keep the agent trying in a certain direction 
until its ' end ' is achieved. 

The complexity of the processes makes any explanation in the 
present state of knowledge, unsatisfactory, but there are some 
suggestions to be made which tend to lessen the mystery. Most 
of us assume, with Titchener, that the determining tendencies 
have some kind of physical mechanism, including doubtless many 
habits which have become capable of operating unconsciously. 
Now let us recall Professor Holt's point of the ' recession of the 
stimulus.' The substance of it is that the key to any organism's 
behavior becomes a progressively complex object as the number 
of separate responses which the organism can make is increased. 
A man comes to have thousands and probably millions of in- 
dividual reflexes, which are touched off, each by its appropriate 
stimulus — each "as fatal as sneezing," in James' phrase — but 
these reflexes are not coordinate, they are integrated or com- 
pounded in hierarchies. The larger responses, such as hunting a 
stamp or hunting a house or seeking fame, employ a great many 
identical reflexes, such as those of walking, of using the hands, the 
eyes, the affective responses, and so on. The largest of our con- 
stant responses, such as those to social position or to wealth or 



l8o ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

fame, contain the smaller, like hunting a stamp or hunting a 
house, as well as others of various grades. These compounds 
grow by accretion, just as the baby's originally complex response 
of rage grows to include rage at particular persons and objects. 
Each response differs from every other in its pattern, in the way 
its elements are Unked together, somewhat as words differ 
though containing common letters, or tunes while containing 
common notes. Within each response the elements must co- 
operate harmoniously; but responses of the same order are 
frequently antagonistic because they involve use of some identical 
elements in different ways. We cannot hunt a stamp in our own 
house and hunt another house outside at the same time. 

Through the learning process as we have so far described it, the 
agent acquires integrated responses to very complex and to some 
unreal objects, — to fortune, fame, truth, justice, as well as to ice 
cream and tobacco. One important class of objects to which we 
respond is the motives of other people, which we from this present 
study, have good reason to know are extremely complicated. Now 
so long as the elements of the large response (or wish, as the Freud- 
ians would call it) are adequately adjusted to the outer situation 
— that is, so long as the man knows just how to carry out every 
step in his purpose — we have no difficulty in conceiving the 
mechanism of it. It is a pure automatic habit. 

But occasionally the response as a whole is aroused, on the 
conditioned reflex principles that we have exhibited, by some 
stimulus associated with the complex object of the total response, 
and yet some of the smaller reflexes are impeded by an ambiguous 
outer situation. The unstamped letter and images of former 
experiences arouse a response which is, as a whole, directed to- 
ward a hjrpothetical stamp existing ui the agent's house; but on 
going to the usual receptacle, no stamp is found there. The 
traveler, because of various indications, believes he is going to- 
ward a certain destination, but he comes to the fork in the road. 
In this case the man has a purpose which he does not know just 
how to realize; the situation has become a problem.^ 

^ The object of a purpose may, evidently, be unreal and ' imaginary.' There may 
be no stamp in the house, and no such destination as the traveler is seeking. There 



LEARNING, REASONING AND RATIONALITY l8l 

And so, when the minor constituent responses of the purpose 
are impeded by the ambiguous arrangement of external objects, 
the neural impulses from the elements which have been aroused 
break over into other possible subsidiary reactions, which are 
thus ' tried out.' The higher or more generalized parts of the re- 
sponse continue active because of continued stimulation from the 
clues which ' mean ' that the object of the purpose must exist 
somewhere (the unstamped letter, for example), and their energy 
finds outlet in successive smaller responses, such as going from 
nook to nook where stamps might be concealed, or up one branch 
of the road looking for more evidence. These newly-called ele- 
ments evidently are also habitual; one does not try any expedient 
about which he knows nothing at all. They are also ' relevant ' to 
the purpose, because the higher parts of the purpose must already 
have some degree of associative connection with them, in order 
that they may be aroused at all. What sets the purpose at rest 
and thus seals a minor response as the solution of the whole prob- 
lem, is the completed operation of the whole response, including 
perception of the customary and expected results. 

These hints, which are far from an analysis, indicate something 
of how the mechanism of the higher learning processes, called pur- 
pose and reasoning, may finally be worked out. The details are 
not of immediate importance for our purposes, but the general 
principle that rational activity is only an instance of the learning 
or habit-forming process is of vital importance, for it clears up 
most of the dispute between * intellectuahsm ' and * anti-intel- 
lectuaHsm.' This general identity of reasoning and learning is 
accepted by a considerable number of the most authoritative 
recent writers on rational processes, as our citations have shown, 
and so almost any of the particular theories we have used in 
elaborating it may be overhauled (such as those relating to con- 
may be no possible perpetual-motion machine, though inventors are always seeking 
it. Still the situation is always definable though more circuitously, in terms of real 
past associations and real present stimuli. The trout which leaps at a sportsman's 
' fly ' is in a sense responding to a live fly which does not exist, but he is incited by 
real visual stimuli the like of which he had previously experienced in contiguity with 
real flies. This point of unreal objects is much stressed, a little too paradoxically, 
by Professors Holt and Perry. 



1 82 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

sciousness) without overthrowing our broad conclusions as to the 
nature of the continuity between instinct and reason. As in the 
biological theory of heredity the obscure physiological mecha- 
nisms are matters of warm dispute but the general facts of heredity 
are known beyond question ; so here, the assimilation of rationality 
to learning is more secure than is knowledge of the minute phys- 
iological processes involved. 

It is hoped now that the generalized conception of a motive, 
given in Chapter I — i. e., a behavior-mechanism which makes 
the subject prepared to act in a certain way with regard to a 
certain object in his enviroimient, so that his behavior is a (mathe- 
matical) function of that object — has now been made clear. 
Such mechanisms, we have seen, seem to be fundamentally of the 
same character, whether the object be a source of light rays and 
the behavior a swimming toward it, or the object is a kingdom or 
the love of God, and the behavior a many-sided endeavor to win 
it. Each apparatus is composed of reflex elements which are 
almost identical in their method of action, presenting very dif- 
ferent practical problems, according as they are innate or ac- 
quired. The difference between motives, once they exist, is in the 
number of elements and in the pattern of their arrangement, like 
the difference between Paradise Lost and the latest popular 
ballad. 

Conflicts of Motives — Personality 

Now consider the relations of the different motives to each other 
within oneself, within one body. The total bundle of motives or 
response-mechanisms constitutes the personality. As we have 
intimated, a body may develop antagonistic motives, motives 
which perhaps get on well enough when they are aroused only at 
different times, but which are occasionally innervated simul- 
taneously by a dilemma in the outward situation, and which then 
try to make the agent do incompatible acts. This conflict is 
usually unpleasant, because the thwarting of practically any 
response after it is aroused calls out instinctive rage-reactions. 
We recognize this situation as provocative to reasoning, but often 
no way of satisfying all wishes can, in the nature of things, be dis- 



LEARNING, REASONING AND RATIONALITY 1 83 

covered, and one or all must inevitably be * suppressed.' Doubt- 
less all the inclinations of no person dwell together in perfect 
harmony. As James said 

I am often confronted by the necessity of standing by one of my empirical 
selves and relinquishing the rest. Not that I would not, if I could, be both 
handsome and fat and weU-dressed, and a great athlete, and make a million 
a year, be a wit, a bon-vivant, and a lady-killer, as weU as a philosopher; 
a philanthropist, statesman, warrior, and African explorer, as well as a ' tone- 
poet,' and a saint. But the thing is simply impossible. The millionaire's 
work would run counter to the saint's; the bon-vivant and the philanthropist 
would trip each other up; the philosopher and the lady-kiUer could not well 
keep house in the same tenement of clay.^ 

In most cases there is a majority rule, and the few wayward 
purposes are exiled by inhibition, because they are weaker than 
the collective force of the others, but sometimes when the latter 
are unusually dormant, the wayward one is strong enough to gain 
control of the body. In double personalities, the motives are 
divided into rival camps which alternately gain possession of all 
the motor apparatus. We recognize all these phenomena as the 
' special field ' of the Freudian psychologists. 

The Freudian Psychology 

With a few exceptions, the Freudians use a terminology and set 
of ' psychical laws ' which are peculiar to themselves, having in 
common with other varieties of psychology only such subjective 
concepts (memory, association of ideas, pleasure and pain, for 
instance) as were current in orthodox psychology when Freud 
started his work in the '90's. Some members of the school ex- 
plicitly repudiate any attempts to connect physiological processes 
with their concepts ' complex,' ' dissociation,' ' repression,' ' con- 
flict ' and the Uke.^ Freud is more hospitable to evidence from 
physiology, but his own suggestions are extremely vague and 
ambiguous.^ Most of his disciples, and the variant Jung school, 
attach more mystical potencies to these introspective entities 
than does the master, but Holt has made a noteworthy effort to 

^ Briefer Course, p. 186. 2 g Hart, op. cit., p. 17. 

^ See his Interpretation of Dreams, e.g., pp. 4782. (3d London edition of 
translation, 1915). 



1 84 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

exhibit the Freudian psychology in terms familiar to modern 
psychologists of the schools. His analysis of the ultimate nature 
of motives is acceptable to his ' behaviorist ' colleagues, but they 
question with considerable reason whether he is accurately rep- 
resenting Freud, as he purports to be.^ Certainly there are many 
suggestions in Freud which can be substantiated in ' behaviorist ' 
terms, but there are also many which cannot. 

The doctrine of the subconscious or unconscious, with its corol- 
lary of repression, comes near being the heart of Freud's system. 
We have his own word for that. The two ' selves,' conscious and 
unconscious, which he believes every person to possess, corre- 
spond pretty closely to the older psychological concepts of feeling 
and intellect. The self which in the waking and normal state has 
control of consciousness is an intellectual person, having asso- 
ciated ideas and planning circuitous methods of fulfilling the 
agent's wants. The subconscious self is a being of pure desire; 
it is the system of original wishes (sex and hunger, apparently, to 
Freud; or just one generalized ' stream of desire ' or ' libido ' to 
many of the school), and it knows nothing of indirection. It in- 
sists on immediate fulfilment. Such wishes as are compatible 
with the foreseeing poKcy of the intellectual self become matters of 
consciousness; such as are not compatible, because of the painful 
conflicts they bring about are banished from consciousness alto- 
gether. (Freud assumes the inhibiting power of pain in all pos- 
sible connections, just as common-sense interactionist psychology 
always has done.) 

But this banishment is not fatal to the exile. A suppressed 
wish, thinks Freud, never dies. The repressed sexual desires of 
nervous patients invariably originate in the first three or four 
years of childhood, according to him. These exiles frequently 
disguise themselves in socially acceptable ideas or in humorous 
sallies and thus pass the * censor ' of consciousness. In sleep the 
censor relaxes vigilance somewhat and less disguise ordinarily is 
required. In the more trying circumstances of repression, the 
disguise assumed is some hallucinatory bodily pain which had 

1 J. B. Watson, "Does Holt Follow Freud?" Jour. Phil. Psy., etc., 14: 85-92 
(1917). 



LEARNING, REASONING AND RATIONALITY 1 85 

been somehow associated in actual experience with the ' affect ' 
gi desire, and here we have the hysterical stage of the nervous 
disorders which the psychoanalysts study.^ 

The theory of the cure is rather more obscure than that of the 
disease, in Freud's writings. He finds that a cure is always 
effected after he discovers, by interpretation of dreams and of 
free associations, the wish which has been suppressed, and its 
connection with the beginnings of the disorder; and then forces 
the patient to remember these matters, — when he overcomes the 
' psychic resistance ' of the censor. Holt interprets the condition 
of health as the reconciliation of all the subject's impulses or 
wishes, so that each finds some measure of expression and is not 
completely thwarted. 

The old theory of ' sublimation ' is much exploited by the 
Freudians, as it is in line with their other doctrines. According to 
this theory, many impulses which it would be disastrous to satisfy 
in their original form may be pacified by psychologically related 
activities which are not incompatible with the other wishes, as the 
direct expression of the first impulses would be. ReHgion and art 
have long been supposed to give scope in an indirect maimer to the 
sexual appetite, and we remember James' suggestion that in 
athletic and similar peaceful contests a * moral equivalent of war ' 
might be found, which would drain off harmlessly the energies of 
the pugnacious instincts without damming them up.^ 

Evaluation of Freudian Doctrines 

Now let us see if anything can be made of all these doctrines in 
terms of the more commonplace psychology we have been using. 
In the first place, the subconscious is not a pure myth. It corre- 
sponds in some degree with the activities of those neural mecha- 
nisms which we have already dealt with, firmly fixed habits which 

1 See Freud's Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses, Brill's 
translation, N. Y., 1912. The papers were first pubUshed from 1895 on. His In- 
terpretation of Dreams also contains many references to his treatment and cure of 
nervous diseases. 

2 Freud's few vague observations on subUmation are in Three Contributions to 
the Sexual Theory, Brill's translations, 1910, pp. 38, 77, 82. McDougall thinks there 
is something in the theory and discusses it further in a Supplement to his Social 
Psychology. 



1 86 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

have come to operate at times unconsciously. Such mechanisms 
we believe, with Titchener, make up part of the ' determining 
tendencies ' in many if not most of our voluntary actions. Their 
existence is usually not suspected, because there is no conscious 
report of them, and so we cannot tell ' why ' we do things; but 
what we do is fully accounted for by the history of our own ner- 
vous system. 

As to conflicts and repression, and transfer of ' affects ' (emo- 
tional reactions) from originally affective to originally indifferent 
objects, we have pretty well accounted for these by our discussion 
of the physiological correlates of emotion and affection, and by 
the old-fashioned principles of association as slightly amplified 
by the new-fashioned facts of the conditioned reflex. As Watson 
says, it appears probable that the ' functional ' nervous diseases 
which the Freudians treat are fundamentally due to unadaptive 
habits, as would be the case with a ' neurasthenic dog ' that had 
been trained to reject meat, to wag his tail at a harsh word, and to 
make other unnatural responses.^ One cannot fail to be struck by 
the constant resort which Freud has to association of ideas; about 
nine-tenths of his writings are devoted to tracing these devious 
connections. 

In connection with the divination of wish-expression in dreams, 
in lapses of memory and in slips of the tongue, also particularly in 
the ' rationalization ' of contradictory principles by a given per- 
son, we must remember that any train of thought or imagination 
is in some sense the acting out of a series of established reactions, 
instinctive and habitual. Every such established reaction is a 
wish, and is a strong one if there are actual inner stimulations of 
hunger, sex, of other discomforts of various kinds arousing it. 
In many circumstances these reactions are more easily carried out 
in imaginal terms than in overt action ; for instance the cat in the 
puzzle-box. His saliva is flowing long before he finds the solution 

^ "Behavior and the Concept of Mental Disease," Jour. PhU. Psy., etc., 13: 589- 
597 (1916). "The central truth that I think Freud has given us is that youthful, 
outgrown and partially discarded habit and instinctive systems of reaction can and 
possibly always do influence the functioning of our adult systems of reactions, and 
influence to a certain extent even the possibilities of our forming other new habit 
systems which we must reasonably be expected to form," p. 590. 



LEARNING, REASONING AND RATIONALITY 1 87 

— he ' imagines ' himself eating — the wish is father to the 
thought. And similarly with ourselves, when the external situa- 
tion baffles our reactions, we have to content ourselves with 
dreams or imagination, which can often conveniently disregard 
the obstacles. When the wish involved is obscure or invisible to 
consciousness, as in certain lapses of memory or slips of the 
tongue, or in rationalization, we must suppose that it is a 
mechanism whose explicit consciousness has decayed, like the 
mechanism which causes us to write the wrong words sometimes 
on the typewriter. 

Our attitude, then, toward the Freudian psychology is briefly 
this: We believe that their neglect of the minute neural mech- 
anisms of the mind will result in many of their sweeping gen- 
eralizations being overthrown. We doubt if their formulas of the 
everlasting hfe of wishes, and of the behavior of wishes under 
suppression, will hold of all human motives; we think these are 
too hasty generalizations from the phenomena of hunger and sex, 
which, as we have seen, have physiological cycles that are pecul- 
iar to themselves. The other fundamental groups of instincts, 
such as rage, fear, striving for social approval, may indeed be in- 
capable of permanent suppression because the external stimuli 
exciting them cannot be totally abolished, but that is a different 
matter from a gnawing canker of discontent pent up within the 
subject himself. So far as the stimuli to rage and fear can be re- 
moved, apparently these instincts can be harmlessly suppressed; 
and so far as the stimuli to emulation or self-assertion or parental 
behavior can be manipulated by social control, the behavior aris- 
ing from these instincts can be controlled. 

But on the other hand, by their going beyond mere introspec- 
tion and considering also the implications of our gross behavior, 
the Freudians have thrown remarkable Hght on the unconscious 
determining tendencies. In our view, to be sure, these uncon- 
scious mechanisms do not have the canny and cunning intelli- 
gence which the Freudians impute to them, — they are not so 
many little men inside the skull of the subject. But the Freudian 
researches have made it impossible for other psychologists to 
ignore this hidden apparatus; and so they have contributed sub- 



1 88 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

stantially to the conclusion that the human reason is wholly a 
matter of instincts and habits (or associations), and therefore is 
often led astray from the truth by passion or by incomplete asso- 
ciations, such as those which land the mouse in the trap, the trout 
on the hook. 

Are Instincts the Prime Movers? 

If we raise the question now whether McDougall is correct in 
saying that the instincts are the prime movers to action, our 
answer will summarize pretty well the whole foregoing psy- 
chological discussion. His view is 

By the conative or impulsive force of some instinct (or of some habit de- 
rived from an instinct), every train of thought, however cold and passionless 
it may seem, is borne along towards its end, and every bodily activity is 
initiated and sustained. The instinctive impiilses determine the ends of all 
activities and supply the driving power by which aU mental activities are 
sustained; and all the complex intellectual apparatus of the most highly de- 
veloped mind is but a means toward these ends, is but the instrument by 
which these impulses seek their satisfaction, while pleasure and pain do but 
serve to guide them in their choice of means.^ 

If these impulses were removed, he adds, the body would be like 
a steam engine whose fires had been drawn. 

That qualification "or of some habit derived from an instinct" 
may constitute a ' joker ' in his thesis. Woodworth asserts that 
the chief object of his own book is to controvert McDougall on 
this head, by showing that "Any [response] mechanism — except 
perhaps some of the most rudimentary that give the simple re- 
flexes — once it is aroused, is capable of furnishing its own drive 
and also of lending drive to the connected mechanisms." ^ This 
proposition evidently is in line with our guess at the apparatus of 
the determining tendency or purpose, in reasoning, which we have 
developed above. Woodworth then shows that it is necessary to 
distinguish between the motive which leads a person originally to 
take up a new activity, and the motive which sustains him in that 
activity after he has become ' interested in it for its own sake.' 
The child can be induced to take up certain studies at school by 
appeals to his self-feeling, including rivalry with other children 

* Social Psychology, p. 44. ^ Op. cit., p. 67. 



LEARNING, REASONING AND RATIONALITY 1 89 

and by excitation of his curiosity or explorative tendencies. And 
the young man chooses an occupation considerably with a view to 
the remuneration attainable, which will afford creature comforts 
and other instinctive satisfactions; partially also with a view to 
the social consideration he will enjoy. 

But invariably some of the people thus lured into such tasks 
become absorbed in the subject-matter of the tasks; one keeps 
exploring its possibilities with increasing zest, and forgets the 
ulterior impulses which induced him to enter upon it in the first 
place; while other individuals either drop the task altogether, 
satisfying their original drives by saying that it is below their 
gifts, or else they have constantly to remind themselves of the 
extraneous inducements, to watch the clock and think of pay day. 
Even in the latter case, it is true, ' quitting-time ' and pay day 
mean not merely the satisfaction of original instincts and appe- 
tites, they mean also opportimity for absorption in some acquired 
activities which have become interesting for their own sakes, such 
as following baseball scores or playing a fiddle in solitude. The 
facts that everyone's attention is strongly concentrated from 
time to time on the mere activity he has come to love, and that 
the intrusion of self -consciousness, of thoughts as to whether he is 
making a good appearance, will only spoil his work, are taken by 
Woodworth to prove that McDougall's picture of the actual mo- 
tives of men is a distorted one, and that an acquired drive moves 
us by its own power (pp. 67-75). He points to McDougall's 
recognition that an act originally xmdertaken as means to an end 
sometimes becomes an end in itself. "Nothing is commoner," 
says McDougall, "than that the earning of money, at first imder- 
taken purely as a means to an end, becomes an end in itself." ^ 
We have met this idea several times in Hartley and the Mills; we 
would hardly expect to find it in McDougall. 

Reconciliation of Associationists and Functionalists 

Our opinion, however, is that the associationists, McDougall 
and Woodworth are all largely in the right. As we have seen, the 
most plausible physiological theory is that pleasure and pain (or 

1 Op. ciL, p. 349. 



I90 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

unpleasantness), as well as the emotions, are correlated with in- 
stinctive reactions, which are reactions that include inner bodily 
changes lending vigor to the whole body. The subjective feelings 
of comfort and discomfort, pleasantness and unpleasantness, 
whether emotional or not, appear to be invariably attached to 
definite instinctive response-complexes. 

We know further that instinctive responses can be attached to 
learned responses or stimuli, upon the conditioned reflex prin- 
ciples, which correspond very closely to the old laws of association. 
In this way one learns what are the pleasant and unpleasant 
things of his particular world, and he comes to like and hate all 
manner of things which had no instinctive interest to him, or even 
have no causal relation to the satisfaction of his instincts. 

This learning process continues throughout life, so that the 
inner reactions which give pleasure or unpleasant feelings are 
constantly being shifted from one attachment to another. What 
we loved yesterday, we hate or are indifferent to today; what we 
hate today we may love tomorrow. It has been seen, furthermore, 
that many connecting links or reflexes in these response-chains 
become imconscious as they become firmly habitual, like many of 
our motions in walking or writing, so that the course of the asso- 
ciation is not discernible, — it plays no part in consciousness. If 
the steps by which these common habits are built up were less 
obvious we should hear a great deal about writing and piano- 
playing instincts. 

In the extreme example of the miser who seeks money for its 
own sake, McDougall is largely right in saying that the instinctive 
reactions of pleasant feeling, which have become transferred to 
the habits of making money, are driving the man on. But the 
associationists were right too, in saying that it is a case of fre- 
quent associations of money with pleasure, and that the original 
connecting ideas have disappeared from consciousness but were 
once there. As John Mill remarked, no one considers the desire 
for money to be ' intuitive ' or instinctive, and yet to introspec- 
tion it becomes just as much of a good in its own right as the 
'moral sense,' and other alleged intuitions. And Woodworth is 
correct also, in saying that the man's interest and attention is now 



LEARNING, REASONING AND RATIONALITY 191 

wholly absorbed in his money, for the acquired mechanisms loom 
larger in the total response than the instincts which led him 
originally to enter the commercial game, or the innate feeling- 
mechanisms which still shed the pleasant feeling around his gold. 

People's absorption in various occupations may be traced, we 
believe, to three factors, in varying proportions: (i) the innate 
general bias or ability for a particular activity, (2) the many 
learned reflexes involved in its execution, and (3) the instinctive 
complex of feeling-reactions which has been gradually trans- 
ferred to the response that is, as a whole, focused on ' the work.' 
The habitual mechanisms, that is, probably never operate in soli- 
tude, they are part of total responses which include various in- 
stinctive elements that give affective consciousness, and possibly 
some instinctive elements which are non-affective. Every activity 
which is ' interesting for its own sake ' undoubtedly does involve 
a number of instinctive neural circuits, such as those connected 
with manipulation and ' curiosity,' and those stimulating to 
exercise all the acquired response-systems (for instance, mathe- 
matical habits) ; and the interesting activity involves moreover a 
fringe of affective inner response, acquired through manifold 
associations of this 'work' with human approval, with domina- 
tion, with the attractive possibilities of money, and so on. This 
fringe of inner reactions gives no clear consciousness while one is 
absorbed in his work, but it nevertheless contributes its vague 
aura to the feeling-tone of * interest.' ^ 

The stock criticism of ' associationist intellectualism ' — that 
the associationists supposed the whole chain of ideas which lead 
from a past pleasure to a contemplated action always to pass 
through the mind of the agent in determining his choice — is 
therefore of little weight.^ Hartley, the Mills, Bain, all of them 

^ Notice the statement of Herrick in his summary of pleasure-pain: " In the nor- 
mal man these mechanisms may function with a minimum of cortical [conscious] 
control; giving the general feeling-tone of well-being or malaise, . . ." Loc. cit. 

2 McDougall's discussion of learning in relation to instincts (Ch. II) indicates 
that ' association ' to him means that all the original sensations must be imagina- 
tively reproduced. Wallas frequently repudiates the associationist ' intellectualism ' 
in the same fashion, e. g., "We have learnt that if we see a man run away or burst 
into tears, we are not bound to infer that he does so because his reason has selected 
that action for him as the best way of securing pleasure or avoiding pain." — Great 
Society, p. 38. 



192 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

emphasized repeatedly that men are often not conscious at the 
time of action of all the associations which have led them to desire 
particular objects, because the linking ' ideas ' are continually 
being dropped. It was the power of association of experiences 
which they kept steadily in mind, and which gave them and us 
one of the most important clues to methods of education and 
social control. It is also futile to represent them as saying that 
one laughs or cries for the sake of the calculated pleasure; they 
allowed for such instinctive reflexes, and expressly limited their 
pleasure-pain theory to volimtary actions. Mirth is a * simple 
pleasure,' which is transferred to a variety of objects. The objects 
of mirth (or grief) are the subject of rational calculations in every- 
one, as is evidenced by the large business of purveying amuse- 
ments. And the objection that it is the instincts, rather than 
pleasure-pain, which determine our so-called voluntary action, 
when we find that instinct and affection are most likely but two 
views of the same thing, becomes hke saying it is health, not the 
body, which is improved by exercise, or that lads get on in the 
world, not by algebra but by hard work. It is the fallacy of dif- 
ferent planes.^ 

The Moral Will 

But still we have not joined issue squarely with the anti-intel- 
lectualist position represented by McDougall on the subject of 
normal human rationality. As we have seen, he contends that the 
instincts are behind every impulse and thought; and such appar- 
ently must be the case on his theory, in all actions, whether reason 
has had anything to do with them or not. How then can he find 
an opposition between instinct and reason? What is ' reason ' to 
him? He objects to the old associationist idea that reasonable 

^ Wallas uses the parallel about algebra and work to protest against the opposi- 
tion between instinct and reason set up by the anti-intellectualists, such as Mc- 
Dougall, Ribot, L. Stephen (Great Society, p. 39). Wallas realizes that there is no 
opposition between reason and habits and instincts, but his account of the relations 
among them is quite unsatisfactory. He says, for example, " Since . . . Thought is 
a true Disposition, it, like all other dispositions, has not only its appropriate group of 
stimuli and its appropriate course of action, but also its appropriate emotion," — 
Great Society, Ch. X, p. 231. He considers reason to be just one among the in- 
stincts, instead of an organization of instincts and habits. 



LEARNING, REASONING AND RATIONALITY 193 

action is normal in men, the truth being, to his mind, that "men 
are only a little bit reasonable, and are frequently moved to act in 
most irrational ways." What does he mean by "irrational"? 

He is thinking of a special case of reasoning, which we have not 
discussed, namely, deliberation over a proposed course of action, 
when the question we put to ourselves is not how can our purpose 
be carried out, but which purpose or impulse shall be allowed 
to prevail? In this very common situation, which varies from 
trivial decisions to great moral contests, we say in introspective 
terms that we * turn the matter over in our mind,' that is, we 
think through all the impHcations which occur to us of each of the 
proposed courses. We try to realize as fully as possible, all that it 
means to do this, and all it involves to do that, in the hope that a 
decided surplus in motive power will appear on one side and so 
lead to volition in that direction. Bentham would say that we 
sum up the pleasures and pains, and automatically choose the 
course representing the greatest net pleasure; while his opponents 
point out that action is often ' in the line of greatest resistance,' 
or toward the greater unpleasantness. 

This case, which seems very unlike the typical reasoning situa- 
tion we have been analyzing, is really of the same nature. Each of 
the conflicting purposes (habitual or instinctive) would act itself 
out if it were not inhibited by the other purposes trying to make 
use of the body in other ways. That constitutes the ambiguity, 
the dilemma. Deliberation signifies that each purpose remains 
sufficiently active to check the others from getting over into overt 
action, while each alternately obtains use of the motor apparatus 
on the imaginal level, thereby acting itself out in ideas, exploring 
the consequences which the act would have so far as the associa- 
tions (memory) of the agent permit. 

The ideas of these consequences, moreover, arouse in idea stUl 
other responses associated with them; that is where the utilitarian 
idea of calculating pleasures comes in. I debate with myself 
whether to go home for limch or to a restaurant; and as I ' men- 
tally explore ' the consequences or implications of my going home, 
I recall the apple pie in the pantry, whereupon my strong apple- 
pie seeking response joins its energy to the others which are trying 



194 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

to take me home. But instead of a response correlated with pleas- 
ure, a determining tendency which has pretty well lost its pleas- 
urable correlate may be aroused. If I am contemplating taking 
a drink of liquor, there may be infinitely more alluring visions on 
the side of drinking, and yet a deep-laid complex of habits and 
instincts which I call * principle ' may determine me not to, just as 
the shy man's habits of courtesy in James' illustration, take him 
to the social gathering which he dreads. In these latter cases the 
* sum of pleasure ' explanation is inaccurate, yet the associationist 
explanation is not far from right, for these obscure determiners 
are likely to be much more largely habitual than instinctive.^ 

This process of mental exploration of consequences, it is easily 
seen, is on a par with the testing process in abstract reasoning. 
In either case it is an adjustment between the subject's own re- 
sponses which is sought; the difference between the two classes of 
problem is chiefly in the nature of the impulses or purposes which 
give the ' drive ' to the deliberation. 

So that McDougall means by irrational action, not behavior 
preceded by no reasoning at all, but action taken without full 
consideration of all the consequences. He means rash and im- 
prudent behavior prompted by over-powering instincts. But 
where does reasonable or rational action begin, in his view? How 
many of the possible consequences must be reckoned with in ad- 
vance before one can be said to take the plunge ' rationally '? Is 
rationality the same as omniscience? As H. R. Marshall replied to 
Sidgwick concerning Aristotle's old problem, we may be sure that 
no man considers his action unreasonable at the time of decision; 
it is only in the light of his purposes as they appear to his con- 
sciousness afterward, that he judges he has acted irrationally.^ 

^ Titchener's dictum, corroborated in different ways by the ' behaviorists ' and 
Freudians, is: "It is always the strongest impulse that mins; though here, as also in the 
case of attention, it is not necessarily the impulse that looks the strongest to psy- 
chological observation; there may be a more impressive array of ideas on the side 
that finally gives way. The winning impulse, as we see in historical examples of 
selective action, is that which has the strongest backing of nerve-forces." — Be- 
ginner's Psychology, p. 248. 

2 Mind, January, 1894. Restated in Instinct and Reason (1898), Ch. XVI, sec. 4. 
Sidgwick's article on "Unreasonable Action," which McDougall takes as a point of 
departure, was in Mind, April, 1893. 



LEARNING, REASONING AND RATIONALITY 195 

We have seen no evidence that the associationists regarded 
human beings as infallible calculators of all consequences of their 
actions, and so we take their * intellectuahsm ' to mean that 
people often do reflect somewhat on how their acts will affect their 
various purposes (which are in some sense pleasures), and par- 
ticularly that people can be made to reflect more carefully by 
timely warnings and signboards.^ This amount of ' intellectual- 
ism ' and ' assumption of human rationality ' is verified not only 
by every-day experience but by the best psychological evidence 
we have been able to secure. When we do consider consequences, 
the fact that our reasonings are based only on associations makes 
them frequently fallacious, as is the * assimiption ' of the chicken 
that he will always be fed. 

^ We have been speaking of the theoretical psychologists among the associa- 
tionists, who are usually included in the anti-intellectualist condemnation. To what 
extent Bentham and other popularizers of psychological hedonism preverted it with 
distressing social consequences (especially by means of the political economy of the 
newspapers and business men of the early and middle nineteenth century) is another 
question. 



CHAPTER XIII 

HOW MAY NEW MOTIVES BE INSTILLED? 

Primitive Wants Soon Outgrown 

It is but a step now to the vastly important subject which we have 
deferred : the methods by which effective new motives (or ' senti- 
ments,' to use Shand's term) may be built up in human beings, 
and the possible range within which they can be made effective. 
We have little to offer as yet which is beyond the common prop- 
erty of moral reformers, yet a restatement of the psychological 
principles involved may be useful. 

The notion which some people have derived in a roundabout 
way from the associationist psychology — that before each action 
every man hastily calculates the net advantage to be gained with 
reference to his original and primitive pleasures or utilities (mean- 
ing principally his own bodily satisfactions or pains, and the per- 
sonal esteem in which he will be held) — is, of course, false. The 
ends which are considered by men to be good in themselves, with 
reference to which they do some calculating and make small or 
great sacrifices, are not fixed or uniform. They are as various as 
the objects to which the instincts (including emotions and feel- 
ings) and habits can be transferred by association. We come into 
the world all with very similar ' utilities ' or ' pleasures,' as the 
associationists knew^ but because of our differing hereditary 
biases of ' interest ' and because of the variety of our associations 
in life, our utilities or ideals or motives (these all amount to the 
same thing, so far as the effect on action is concerned) come to 
differ enormously from person to person and within one person 
from time to time. The conscious records of these transfers or 
associations frequently disappear, and then we can give no ra- 
tional account of why we want to tell the truth or to tell lies or 
attain other final objectives, we shall have to say if pressed "Be- 
cause that's the kind of man I am." We want them just for their 
own sake. Hence it is a supreme blimder to suppose that men in 

196 



HOW MAY NEW MOTIVES BE INSTILLED? I97 

general are, or necessarily always will be, appealed to chiefly 
through their primitive wants; and it is equally erroneous to sup- 
pose that instincts must be assumed to account for all the broadly 
similar lines of human activity. 

The instinct and appetite groups do leave their marks on our 
sophisticated motives, it is true, and knowledge of the instincts 
does help us to appeal to the most powerful impulses. We learn 
to satisfy our hunger and to deal with our sex appetite in certain 
individual ways, and other methods of satisfaction become often 
impossible to us. We are all moved by the desire for approbation, 
but we have different standards of approval, — to some players, 
as Hamlet said, the censure of one good judge must outweigh the 
applause of a whole theatreful of others. We develop idiosyn- 
crasies of fearing and hating, and so on. Consequently a stimulus 
which will arouse a response built upon a certain instinct-group in 
one person will not arouse the corresponding instinct-group in 
another. But there remain similarities enough within these 
classes of mature motives so that food purveyors can make effec- 
tive appeals to a generalized appetite, promoters of county his- 
tories can find plenty of subscribers by flattering the numerous 
' leading citizens,' authors can exploit the sex interest by best- 
seller novels, and politicians can play on the sympathy and hate of 
their audiences. There seems to be promise that social science will 
develop sound generalizations of more and more scope, as psy- 
chological evidence in its multitude of forms accumulates. 

Emotional Drives to Establish Necessary Habits 

Such evidence will help us not only in dealing with men as we 
find them, but in training the rising generations to better and 
better social adaptation. Watson and Morgan suggest, in the con- 
clusion of their report on emotional reactions in infants, that the 
possibility of transfer of affective responses to indifferent objects 
by association, on conditioned reflex principles, points to the use 
of emotional drives to establish prosaic but necessary habits.^ 
Interest or added energy can be drawn from emotional reservoirs 
in school, not only by methods of presenting the material, but by 

^ Op. ciL, pp. 172-174. 



198 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

the teacher's personaHty. Fear of discharge, rage at ridicule, ap- 
peals to loyalty are similar devices long ago hit upon by practical 
men in the industrial world; and the money reward, by the feel- 
ings which have been transferred to it from all manner of pleasant 
experiences that it has secured, imparts zest to the task upon 
which receipt of money depends. 

We have not said anything so far about conscience or religious 
fervor, but clearly in the view of our commonplace psychology, 
these forces are strongly emotional and are largely built up by 
experience. There may well be some specific instinctive roots, 
such as kindliness or sjrmpathy, fear or awe at the world at large 
and at supernatural rewards or punishments; but the particular 
things which these motives prompt people to do are only ex- 
plicable, as John Mill explained them, by long, pervasive training. 
Emotions of fear and love have been transferred into these com- 
plexes, and particularly is the desire of approval and dread of 
disapproval to be discerned. We know what supreme power the 
religious and moral conscience has wielded over men in all ages, in 
the various forms of fanaticism, devoutness, class or professional 
standards (noblesse oblige, for instance), down to our least pre- 
tentious ' principles ' ; and so this old form of social control can be 
elaborated in the future in the service of new ideals. 

Reiterated and manifold associations of the ideal object with 
our elemental and normally-acquired motives, are the chief fac- 
tors in the conscience and religion-building process. Most of us 
have now a prejudice in favor of truth, and so we consider that 
these associations to be preached in the future should be true 
causal ones, — in other words, we think that in the long run the 
truth will make men free, and also harmonious with each other. 
But if it should prove that over and above knowledge, good-will 
must be inculcated for the sake of the general welfare, the wise 
moral leader will be able to promote enthusiasm for the new and 
artificial ideals by associations of contiguity and similarity with 
the more primitive objects of emotion, when there is no necessary 
causal relation between the two. 

The person who wishes to advance the cause of humanity, in 
other words, has two possible lines of action, both made possible 



HOW MAY NEW MOTIVES BE INSTILLED? 199 

by the psychological principles of learning or association which we 
have been surveying. He may utilize our learning capacity, and 
his own, to teach us how more economically to realize our present 
wants, — this is the purely intellectual effect of knowledge. We 
can be depended on to adopt any short-cut methods which are 
pointed out to us for the satisfaction of our existing desires. He 
may, on the other hand, utilize our learning mechanisms to create 
new wants in us, wants which will make us more harmonious with 
each other and with nature, by associating new (and ' better ') 
ideals with our old wants, particularly with our emotional inter- 
ests. Mr. Hoover's education of our conscience in regard to food 
conservation was along both lines; he showed us how we could 
help win the war, which we already wanted to do; and by means 
of stories of the suffering across the sea, he made our want to save 
food still stronger. The story of how much we owe to the sufferings 
of noble men of long ago, for example, always stirs us to do some- 
thing for the general welfare, even though it is quite possible for 
us to take the benefits which have been handed down to us with- 
out bestirring ourselves to help the society of the future. 

The words of two wise masters will show how well these prin- 
ciples have been understood in both modern and ancient times. 
William James counseled school teachers. 

Since some objects are natively interesting and in others interest is arti- 
ficially acquired, the teacher must know which the natively interesting ones 
are; for . . . other objects can artificially acquire an interest only through 
first becoming associated with some of these natively interesting things. . . . 
The two associated objects grow, as it were, together: the interesting portion sheds 
its quality over the whole; and thus things not interesting in their own right bor- 
row an interest which becomes as real and as strong as that of any natively inter- 
esting thing} 

And it was Pythagoras — was it not? — who said : " Choose that 
course which is most excellent, and custom will render it most 
delightful." Plato, too, was much concerned with elimination of 
the anecdotes attributing immoral acts to gods and heroes from 
the epics of Homer, before these should be told to the yoimg. "It 
is most important," he said, "that the tales which the young first 
hear should be models of virtuous thoughts." ^ 

^ Talks to Teachers (1899), pp. 91, 94. ^ RepubKc, Bk. II. 



200 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

The effectiveness of such short-cut emotional appeals, of asso- 
ciations which arouse new interests rather than show logically how 
to satisfy old ones, is well known to advertisers and to many 
other masters of practical art (to the astonishment of many ob- 
servers ' that people can be so illogical ') . 

The rational moralist tries hard to believe that "Knowledge is 
Virtue," — i. e., that our existing wants would be harmonious if 
we only had sufficient knowledge; but if he finds himself in doubt 
on that head he often frankly counsels the propagation of socially 
useful illusions.^ But we believe the above-stated psychological 
principles point toward a better bridge between egoism and uni- 
versalism, not through illusion but through the development of 
' sentiments ' or new motives for old. In this there need be no 
deception and so no possibility of disillusionment. If we had to 
regard the existing human wants, or the wants which have existed 
in the past, as immutable, then fiction-making and the mailed fist 
of the state would doubtless be the only alternatives to that war- 
fare of each against all over which Hobbes shuddered. 

Natural Limits to Perfectibility 

There are, of course, natural limits to the educability of 
motives, and they set bounds to reforms in wants, whether by 
preacher, legislator or advertiser. (There are also limits, undoubt- 
edly, to the human ability to acquire knowledge, though our race 
may indefinitely advance in it.) What these limitations are is an 
uncertain matter. 

There are, in the first place, certain external conditions to 
which we must conform, or our social group will perish. Professor 
Carver has developed this point clearly. To use one of his illus- 
trations, the Moslems have instilled into their people an aversion 
to pork; that is an artificial ideal which does effectively control 
their conduct. It is only one of thousands, which are just as effec- 
tive, throughout the human family. But scientific experiments 
show that the hog is a much more economical converter of plant 
substances into concentrated human food than is any other beast, 
and so pork-eating groups have an advantage over the Moslems in 

^ E. A. Ross, Social Control; B. Kidd, Social Evolution. 



HOW MAY NEW MOTIVES BE INSTILLED? 20I 

the competition for survival. Similarly as to the general organiza- 
tion of individual motives which we call altruism ; apart from the 
question how far it can possibly be made effective over most 
people, there is the question of how a given degree of self-prefer- 
ence will work with reference to the situation of man in nature. 

In the second place, our common instinctive and other phys- 
iological endowments set limits to the refashioning of our wants. 
We cannot learn not to want food, nor to hate our children. Can 
we learn to love our enemies? But there have existed a great 
variety of ways of satisfying these stubborn wants through his- 
torical times. The Spartan methods of loving children were what 
we might use if we could hate them. The urgent sexual wants 
have been repressed effectively by customs, by vows, to varying 
extents, and it is still an open question whether they may not be 
further repressed than is generally done without any injurious 
consequences. As to selfishness or avarice, which are commonly 
supposed to be natural barriers to extensive reforms, these are 
mere complexes of elementary wants, which are of quite different 
appearance when their constituents are reorganized. For ex- 
ample, selfish strife for social approval has a totally different 
effect, according as social approval is given for large collections of 
human heads, or is given for peaceful, ' law-abiding ' conduct. 
And so, while many ideals are doubtless not ' humanly possible,' 
it is practically impossible at present to say what they are. 

A third limitation is set, not by our common endowments, but 
by our differing individual mental endowments, our differing 
innate abilities. This subject is more obscure even than the gen- 
eral behavior-mechanisms we have been discussing,^ but even from 
rough observation we may doubt if any person's character is 
wholly at the mercy of his social environment. We have seen 
that besides the specific instincts there are apparently larger 
neural structures which are hereditary and give a special bias to 
the learning of the individual, although they do not determine any 
exact responses. Some native peculiarity of taste and ability is 
characteristic of every one of us, it would seem, since children of 

^ Thomdike has devoted to it Vol. Ill of his recent Educational Psychology, 
with data gathered chiefly in the public schools. 



202 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

about the same training develop strikingly different abilities. 
This ' about the same training,' however, covers a multitude of 
differences, and carefully sifted evidence is still scant. It may be 
granted to the social psychologists that the individual's character 
is quite largely a social product, that customs and institutions are 
among our most important teachers, that we are to some extent 
molded by physical and social influences; ^ but the innate factors 
of * nature ' which cannot be reduced to nurture, are much to be 
reckoned with in the future. The special significance of these in- 
dividual differences for reforms of motives, as we shall point out 
in a following chapter, is that all people are not equally suscep- 
tible to the development of a given ideal, such as benevolence. 

The extent of each of these various limitations is a matter to be 
estabUshed empirically and statistically, far more than by psy- 
chological principles. Economic data, business and sociological 
experiments, historical study, and many other sources will all 
yield valuable evidence if studied scientifically. 

^ When Cooley claims that the old opposition between ' individual * and ' social ' 
is entirely false, because the individual is a social product, he is going a little too far, 
however. When the young man fights and dies for his country, there is a conflict 
between the interests of society and of the individual which is no mere figure of 
speech. 



PART III 

SOME APPLICATIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 
TO PROBLEMS OF ECONOMIC THEORY 



This Part is of a more technical nature than 

the preceding sections, and presupposes some 

familiarity with economic principles 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE PRESENT STATE OF ECONOMIC PSYCHOLOGY 

Hedonist Premises Broadly True 

The reader who is familiar with economic discussions will not 
have failed to apply for himself the fundamental principles of mo- 
tives, which we have set forth above, to various economic prob- 
lems in which he is interested. Our chief object, in fact, is to 
make contemporary psychological views more conveniently 
available to economic students, so that such students may work 
out any consequences which seem to them important. As a be- 
ginning in this direction, however, we shall indicate some of the 
more obvious appUcations of our study to the analyses of con- 
sumption, value, saving, and work. Our treatment is avowedly 
tentative and sketchy, for each of these topics is extremely large 
by itself. 

At the outset it is evident that our conclusions will have a con- 
servative and * intellectualist ' slant, for we have found that re- 
cent work on habit and instinct tends to confirm, much more than 
James and McDougall would have us believe, the old common- 
sense hedonistic assumptions that people usually act for the sake 
of expected consequences and that they are constantly learning 
more and more economical means of getting whatever objects 
are pleasing to them. That is to say, all people are ' rational,' in 
the only reasonable sense of the word. And we are moved to work 
by * utilities ' which, for the most part, are derived from economic 
goods. These broad premises of the classical and marginal utiHty 
economics are still unshaken. 

Of course many economic laws, as Bagehot says, are only first 
approximations, or smooth diagrams which describe the main 
forces but leave innumerable minor ones to be filled in. Competi- 
tion, self-interest, mobility of labor and capital, knowledge of 
where one's best economic opportunities lie and unhindered abil- 

205 



206 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

ity to pursue them, are only roughly to be found in the real world, 
but these words all describe biases which can be constantly 
counted upon, very much as the action of gravity or the force of a 
wind can be coimted upon in spite of the effects of countervailing 
forces. The laws in all other sciences are approximations too : a fall- 
ing apple is not completely true to the gravitation formula because 
of interference by the air. All sciences, therefore, have to resort 
more or less, as ours does, to the great principle of inertia of large 
numbers, — that is, in a large munber of observations, when one 
or a few grand forces are in operation, the ' random ' errors, or 
variations due to minor forces, offset one another, and the average 
of the whole series is found to agree pretty closely with the the- 
oretical effect of the main forces. Statistical inductive methods 
appUed to mass phenomena must be used to prune and check de- 
ductive reasoning, in all these fields, because it is practically im- 
possible to isolate completely the operations of one force or ' law.' 

This dependence upon the statistical tool is nowhere more 
marked than in contemporary psychology; and consequently the 
economist will get more enlightenment upon most points of eco- 
nomic psychology from his own behavior-statistics than from 
anything in the doctrines of psychologists, who have not yet got- 
ten around to the special problems with which the economist is 
concerned. Statistical curves and deviation-measures of learn- 
ing, of 'intelligence quotients,' of conditioned reflexes, and of 
many other phenomena are being collected and analyzed in the 
laboratory; but if we inquire into particulars concerning the moti- 
vation relations of saving and the interest rate, or of work and 
wages, the psychologist can give us only a general reply which 
needs exhaustive elaboration from economic experience tables. 

We must avoid, therefore, both undue expectations of psy- 
chological touchstones, and undiscriminating rejection of the 
hedonist premises of the classical and marginal utility economics. 
But still we may find, in the modem formulation of motives, clues 
to new angles of attack on our own problems. 



CHAPTER XV 

APPLICATIONS TO ECONOMIC WANTS 

The Nature of a Want 

What precisely is a want? It always involves a response-mecha- 
nism of sense-organs, nerves and muscles, set up ready to do a 
definite piece of work when stimulated. This is the objective 
aspect of a want; anyone can observe whether a man's action to- 
ward an apple is buying, eating, or indifference. Usually also 
there is a subjective side, which is the man's consciousness of 
what he does or is set to do. Sometimes only this side can be ob- 
served at all, by methods now available: the man merely thinks 
"I would like to have an apple, but it's not worth while," as he 
goes past the fruit stand. But in this last case also, as we have 
seen, certain of the man's response-mechanisms are active. These 
are predominantly vocal, but salivary, other internal, and per- 
haps the beginnings of stopping and reaching out are involved too, 
though not in such fashion as to be evident to the bystander unless 
the latter be equipped with very delicate instruments. In this 
case we shall have to take the man's word for it that he has an 
' ineffectual ' desire for an apple; yet we must interpret and ac- 
count for that desire just as we do for any response of which he is 
capable. Sometimes when he reports that his motives are con- 
cerned only with right and justice, we find that his actions — 
including these protestations of disinterestedness — center about 
the amassing of property for himself. (Attempting to prove the 
universality of this sort of behavior is the peculiar sport of eco- 
nomic interpreters of history.) In such a case it is clear that the 
subjective, ' conscious ' report is entirely inadequate to a true 
view of the motive-situation. 

In brief, as we have reiterated in the foregoing chapters, the 
physiological, objective behavior-series alone is a complete 

207 



208 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

series; and so we propose in our analysis to use the objective 
terminology rather than the concepts of sensations, streams of 
consciousness, psychic income, feelings or other subjective en- 
tities. This program implies no adherence to any particular 
doctrine of the Freudian psychology except the commonplace of 
unconscious or * subconscious ' responses or motives; and it differs 
from the psychic accounting of Fetter and Fisher only to the ex- 
tent that the subjective side of motives is incomplete. It is 
essentially the program of all generations of economists, for they 
have always drawn their premises as to human motives from what 
they saw men in the mass doing, much more than from their own 
solitary introspection. The economist is a behaviorist, trying to 
find what people can be depended upon to do in certain common 
situations. "Actions speak louder than words." 

Evolution of Wants 

There are two broad aspects of the consumption of wealth 
which are of special interest to economists. That which has 
claimed most attention so far is the psychology of wants in rela- 
tion to value, — diminishing utility, and matters connected 
therewith. When writers speak of the increased importance 
which consumption has attained in economics, after the manner of 
Jevons,^ they are usually referring to the advantages derived from 
the marginal utility contributions to value. ' Psychological 
schools ' of economists, in general, are simply marginal utility 
enthusiasts. 

The other aspect of consumption with which we are concerned 
is the evolution of wants: how people come to want just what they 
do want. This latter topic is the ground of most of the economic 
controversy over hedonism, and is also the chief interest of the 
social- value school. If their theory were called * social utility ' 
instead of social value it might make matters clearer to most of us. 
Bohm-Bawerk brushes aside this line of inquiry, and insists that 
the theory of value takes wants for granted. He cares not why 

^ E. g., M. Roche- Agussol, La Psychologic Economique chez les Anglo- Ameri- 
cains (1918), p. 39: "The study of consumption, traditionally considered as a post- 
economic study, becomes more and more a body of principles dominating the whole 
of the science." 



APPLICATIONS TO ECONOMIC WANTS 209 

people like or dislike as they do; he notes merely that their 
choices, their actions, indicate what they do want, and his bus- 
iness is to show how these individual choices work themselves out 
into market value.^ 

This division of labor seems legitimate to us, even if the social- 
value contention as to the instabihty and constant interaction of 
individual wants be granted. Consequently we shall postpone 
most of the questions on utility to another chapter, and shall 
take up now the subject of mutations or evolution of wants. 

The usefulness which any light upon the natural history of 
wants would have has already been touched upon in our first 
chapter. There is interest both in the understanding and in the 
control of economic behavior; and study of the genesis of existing 
wants furnishes a clue not only to understanding and playing 
upon existing motives, but also to possibilities of grafting, prun- 
ing and training motives into new directions. Obviously con- 
sumers' wants, using the term broadly, determine not only what 
things are to be produced, but what appeals and incentives are 
necessary to get them produced. It is no doubt true, as Hobson 
and others frequently remind us, that in many cases a producer 
can ' create ' a demand for his product; but plenty of bankrupt 
producers — imitators of Coca-Cola or what not — who have 
tried such a campaign, can testify that it is not invariably success- 
ful. The limits of educabiUty of demands is thus an important 
issue. Profits are usually to be made by supplying the most 
urgent wants — except to the extent that inequalities of wealth 
or of persuasive power give one person's want a greater influence 
over production than the want of another — we need not now go 
into the fine points of that line of argument. Hence, whatever im- 
provements in welfare may be possible through inventions like 
labor-saving machinery, improvements in distribution of wealth, 
parliamentary government, or other social procedure, one great 
reform is somehow to make people only want more nearly what is 
good for them. 

^ Pos. Theorie, 3d ed., pp. 310-330. 



2IO ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

Transfer of Derived Wants 

Wants develop, of course, from the interplay between the indi- 
vidual's hereditary (instinctive) equipment and his external 
world. Both inner and outer items are variable in some respects 
between individuals. The instincts are probably always seeking 
or avoiding (positive or negative) reactions; ^ some of them being 
connected with physiological appetitive mechanisms which pro- 
vide periodic inner stimulations independently of the outer 
situation, others being responsive only to certain outer stimuli 
which may never be encountered. These primitive desires or 
aversions, as we may now briefly call them, when aroused, often 
or always have conscious correlates of emotion, or of pleasant- 
ness and unpleasantness. So that our ' liking ' a thing, and our 
trying to get it, are merely two ways of describing the same 
phenomenon; we cannot scientifically say that one proceeds from 
the other. These instinctive groups, which we isolated as well as 
we could in Chapter IX— mainly hunger, fear (including aver- 
sion to painful stimuH) , rage, sex, parental manipulation, gregari- 
ousness, desire for social approval, and, quite probably, the 
impulses toward laughter — stake out the main lines to which 
our wants always conform. 

But only broad and vague lines. From birth onward, our hu- 
man learning capacity and the individual peculiarities of our ex- 
perience lead each of us ceaselessly to acquire habit-mechanisms 
that supplement (and often quite transform) the instinctive re- 
sponses; so that there results the confusing variety of individual 
'interests.' *'One man's meat is another man's poison," and 
"There is no disputing over tastes," etc. Part of this variabiHty, 
to be sure, may well be due to inborn differences, rather than to 
mere discrepancies of experience. This is the disputed question of 
aptitudes such as musical. It is also observed that children — 
after a few months of infancy — form new habits more readily 
than do adults; "old dogs find it hard to learn new tricks." These 
commonplaces cover a world of baffling problems for the psy- 
chologist; in time he will tell us more exactly what mental differ- 

^ See Ch. X, above. 



APPLICATIONS TO ECONOMIC WANTS 211 

ences are actually iimate and how the range of learning capacity 
varies with age. But at any rate, human adaptability and plastic- 
ity is so great that accurate generalization concerning want-evo- 
lution, beyond a few simple laws of association or habit-formation, 
is extremely difi&cult. 

The principle of chief importance is that of contiguity or con- 
ditioned reflex, — in effect a new name for one of the old laws of 
association to which so much attention has been given in the 
previous chapters. The baby's original wants as to food include 
only responses to the touch of the nipple; while the sight of his 
mother, or a white bottle, or characteristic soiuids, arouse in 
him no observable reactions. But after experiencing these sights 
and sounds simultaneously with the feeding sensations a number 
of times, the sight of an empty bottle, or of any roimd white thing, 
will start his feeding responses going. In other words, he has 
acquired a want for rornid white objects. Fundamentally that is 
the way our wants progress. 

This example illustrates the common case of want transfer by 
acquisition of knowledge, the ultimate want remaining constant. 
The child has ' discovered ' in a crude way that pursuit of round 
white things leads to satisfaction in feeding. So he goes on, inces- 
santly discovering other technology, other physico-chemical 
affinities in the natural world about him. So the race has gone on, 
learning that certain stones can be treated so as to form iron 
implements whereby their food-getting, combative, manipulative 
and other impulses could be satisfied. This growth of knowledge 
(and also of pseudo-knowledge, for learning is fallible, as the 
utiUtarians knew well enough) is of itself constantly changing the 
demands of the market. People learn that tooth brushes and 
paste are probably means to avoid toothache, and industries 
supplying these articles arise. Also the physical environment is 
constantly offering new problems due to climate, to increase of 
population and exhaustion of some resources, and to the new 
methods whereby we hve; adaptation to these innovations must 
be learned. 



212 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

The Institution of Exchange 

From wants for goods and services arises the so-called economic 
motive, — the desire for wealth. Yet it is not the product of such 
wants alone, but also of the ' institution ' of exchange, of trucking 
and bartering. The lower animals have wants for goods, but they 
have no desire for generalized wealth, because they have not 
learned to satisfy their wants indirectly by exchange. This in- 
stitution of exchange, with the resulting division of labor, was un- 
doubtedly of exceedingly slow growth, like the development of 
language or any of the other fundamental collective habits; but 
once it exists, the child learns readily that his wants for goods such 
as candy or clothes are to be satisfied most readily by means of 
money, and he learns also the means to get money. The case is 
similar to his learning to talk and to read and write; and so far as 
the individual's processes are concerned, fundamentally similar 
to the cat's learning the location of the milk can. 

From this point it would be fairly easy to explain genetically 
why ' avarice ' has been recognized throughout history as a con- 
trolling passion. The child has wants for particular things, includ- 
ing the want for power over other people. He is not avaricious for 
money or generalized wealth. But soon, in any exchanging soci- 
ety, he learns the formula: More bribes to offer, more of my 
wants satisfied. And so the desire for wealth easily becomes a 
master motive, though a derived one. Why people are avaricious 
in varying degrees is another matter; here we are only pointing 
out why avarice must always, in any form of society where ex- 
change on more than the most limited scale is feasible, be an im- 
portant clue to human behavior. 

In a similar way, the observation that it is human nature to 
find where one's advantage lies and to seek it, is only a manner of 
saying that all people have rather similar private wants, and have 
also considerable learning capacity wherewith to discover how to 
gratify them. 

It would be an interesting but a very difficult matter to seek the 
instinctive and habitual roots of this trading custom, using the 
historical and anthropological evidence available. Doubtless little 



APPLICATIONS TO ECONOMIC WANTS 21 3 

explanation is required for the disposition people so universally 
show of wanting to reap where they have not sown, — to use the 
products of another's labor; but the main problem is to explain 
how peaceable exchange grew up. Biicher's account ^ would prob- 
ably be somewhat modified in the light of more recent evidence, 
but it is plausible enough that the first exchanges were between 
tribes as units, even between tribes which were so fearsome or 
hostile toward one another that they dared not come face to face, 
but left their wares at a rendezvous, and returned later to gather 
up the goods which had meanwhile been left by the ' buyer.' A 
curious inviolability, or immunity to warfare, has invested fairs 
and markets from very early times; this is one of the large topics 
of the economic historian. The proximate explanation why the 
peace was kept and exchange rather than mere robbery was prac- 
tised, is custom; but whence the custom? We shall consider eco- 
nomic custom in general within a moment, but here be it said that 
the old utilitarian explanation must again be drawn upon. In the 
beginnings some people found it to their advantage to pay, rather 
than to rob, since robbery was liable to bring uncomfortable 
retaliation. It was somewhat as the cat finds it to her advantage 
to stay off the kitchen table when people are around. But as soon 
as the ' pioneers ' began to enjoin barter on their children, it need 
never occur to the latter that there was any other possibility. 
The latter concession may be allowed toward Adam Smith's re- 
jection of the utility explanation. We may, perhaps, make some 
allowance for the tutelage of instinctive gregariousness and quasi- 
instinctive sympathy, but in the most primitive society their 
effects upon exchange are not apt to be great. 

Transfer of Final Wants 

So far we have been considering mainly the changes in methods 
of satisfying given fundamental wants, assuming the latter to re- 
main constant. But there is another case of want-mutation, in 
which what was originally sought as a means (having 'instru- 
mental value,' as the philosophers of value say) becomes sought 
as an end in itself. This tendency is recognized in common speech 

1 Industrial Evolution, Ch. II. 



214 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

as "force (inertia) of habit"; for instance "He's got used to 
stinginess, and can't change his ways since he became rich." The 
thing was indifferent or positively disagreeable at first, perhaps, 
like the use of a spoon or fork to a baby, but after sufi&cient asso- 
ciation with results generally pleasant, one likes it for its own 
sake. 

The miser was James Mill's leading example; yet all of us feel a 
pleasant thrill when we chance to * make some money.' The good 
farmer loathes the sight of weeds, and exults at the spectacle of 
big, dark-green growing corn, even when they are on somebody 
else's land. And as Veblen says, we admire simply and unaffect- 
edly the polish of a black boot, but abhor the shine on an old coat 
sleeve. Originally we welcomed or spurned the thing because it 
was a causal step toward something else liked or disliked in itself, 
but now the something else has dropped out of consciousness or 
has become secondary. 

A similar ilbertragung, or transfer of interest, as we have seen, is 
a cornerstone of the Freudian psychology, and it is indeed prob- 
able that a goodly proportion of all the ultimate desires or aver- 
sions of adult life ■ — our tastes, about which there is no disputing 
— were derived sometime by association from more primitive 
tastes, which latter have now dropped away. If we remember 
them at all, as when we are confronted by an old portrait albiun, it 
is with astonishment that ever we could have been so foolish. 

Such transfer of interest is psychologically a most complex and 
baffling problem, like the whole of pleasure-pain. We do not 
know in just what type of cases it is sure to take place. We know 
that there is a constant succession of interests in everybody, and 
that one leads to another by repetition of experiences, somewhat 
as a young man often comes to love the girl whom at first he 
tolerated only for the sake of her friend in whom he was more 
interested. It is evident that there is more in this example than 
mere habit; and even the cultivation of a taste for tobacco or 
oysters or olives is perhaps more simple and to the point. But in 
the whole range of such transitions we have the common char- 
acters of a smoothing down of irritations which were felt in the 
learning, a discovery of unsuspected congenital preferences which 



APPLICATIONS TO ECONOMIC WANTS 21 5 

are appealed to by the new thing, and a wearing to unconscious- 
ness of the original major response (such as the specific pleasures 
for which money was sought) ; while the unlocalized aura of pleas- 
ant feeling-reactions (partially visceral) which are the anchor of 
the overt responses such as money-making, remains active, and 
thus makes the money 'give satisfaction ' for its own sake. 

These two cases of want-mutation are interlocking. In our 
efforts to satisfy existing wants, we are constantly, though often 
unwittingly, acquiring new interests which will demand further 
means of satisfaction. The railway cheapens haulage and the air- 
plane hastens it, but both open up new demands based on recrea- 
tive experiences. Similarly arise the moving picture, phonograph, 
camera, automobile, and innumerable other industries. 

Insatiability of Wants 

Here we are close to the economist's old friend, the principle of 
* insatiability of wants.' ''The desire of food," as Adam Smith 
pointed out, "is limited in every man by the narrow capacity of 
the human stomach," ^ and similarly there seem to be rather nar- 
row natural limits to our needs of other fundamental necessities. 
Preachers of the simple life have an unassailably logical case; 
' poverty ' could be ameliorated and perhaps abolished by * pro- 
gress ' if everyone contented himself with a generous physi- 
ological minimum of consumption, and kept up his maximum 
productive efforts on that homely fare. Nothing is more obvious, 
however, than that the wants of nearly every one of us, even for 
food, keep constantly ahead of our power to provide. 

This apparent insatiability of wants was attributed by Adam 
Smith to universal human vanity or emulation or effort to imitate 
the social classes above. "The desire of the conveniences and 
ornaments of building, dress, equipage, and household furniture 
seems to have no limit or certain boundary," and in many other 
cormections he intimates that ' bettering one's condition ' is a 
matter of social rivalry more than of brute comforts. The point is 
elaborated by Veblen and Taussig.^ 

^ Wealth of Nations, Bk. I, ch. xi, pt. ii. 

' Taussig, Inventors and Money-Makers, pp. 99 ff. Veblen, Theory of the 
Leisure Class. 



2l6 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

This quasi-instinctive emulative strain in wants is perfectly- 
clear, and is tremendously important, yet it is easily exaggerated. 
We learn of the existence and nature of many things by seeing 
them in the possession of our neighbors, to be sure; but our want- 
ing the things then is not necessarily due mainly to our desire to 
keep up with the neighbors. Vacuum cleaners, electric washing 
machines, automobiles, houses with good light and air, are goods 
which many people are working toward; they are more expensive 
than the simple life, but they give more convenience and socia- 
bility and better health. Good medical care, the most healthful 
recreation, the broadest education, are all more expensive than 
the simple life affords, and naturally the wealthier persons get 
them first, while other people learn of their existence and benefits 
through these wealthier neighbors. So that wants are likely to 
expand indefinitely merely from continuous discoveries of more 
effective ways of satisfying our fundamental needs. 

Of course the existence of a taste proves nothing as to its whole- 
someness, or whether it was established originally through mere 
social emulation. The original associations may be good or bad; 
transfer of interest takes place chiefly on the basis of their fre- 
quency. One person ' simply and unaffectedly ' cannot endure a 
shoe without a French heel and a toothpick toe, while another 
can endure none but good literature. 

The Role of Custom 

We must now give some further account of the social influences 
which are perhaps preponderant in determining the detail of our 
wants. Custom, convention, prestige, fashion, — all are names 
indicating the power which a group exerts over the choices or acts 
of its members, through mere social approval, public opinion, or 
uncompelled deference to superior competence. This is the prov- 
ince of social psychology, which uses the fundamental principles 
we have been discussing, but which gives special attention to the 
reactions of individuals to the presence or actions (including the 
thoughts and opinions) of their fellows. 

Economists who have cultivated what passed for social psy- 
chology have told us that * the individual ' is a social product; 



APPLICATIONS TO ECONOMIC WANTS 217 

that his character, his desires, his capacities, are instilled by the 
physical and social environment into which he happens to be born. 
He is not self-contained, with natural and stable wants, but he is 
constantly shifting his likes and dislikes with the ' social mind ' of 
his * crowd,' which is, in turn, strongly influenced by the ' sug- 
gestions ' of its leaders. Cooley, B. M. Anderson, and J. M. Clark 
are among those holding these views. 

With some demurring on the score of innate individual capaci- 
ties (the poet or the athlete is born, not made), which do seem to 
shape our destinies more than extremists of this school realize, 
we may say. So far, good. The wants of all of us are greatly in- 
fluenced by the attitudes of others; but can we go further with the 
analysis of this influence, toward finding its limits? 

Starting with custom, which embraces the more stable institu- 
tions, we realize at once that the physiological inertia of habit is an 
important element. It is the mechanical nature of any habit to 
become more and more fijced by exercise, so that if the outer situa- 
tion were simple and unchanging and our original impulses har- 
monious, we should go on indefinitely in a rut, so long as the 
responses were serviceable enough to give survival. The habitual 
response to a given stimulus is always the line of least resistance, 
and it will infallibly occur unless an equally powerful antagonistic 
response is simultaneously stimulated, when we have a problem 
that calls for reasoning or invention. The lower animals are 
creatures of habit much more than we, because their learning 
capacity is so far below ours; but we as well as they readily fall 
into customs because the habitual way is the easiest way. 

We should not fail also to connect customs with certain natural 
cycles and crises, such as birth, puberty, death. 

Emulation in Custom 

And of course there are more active factors. Most important 
undoubtedly is the instinctive (?) desire for approval from our 
fellows. As Adam Smith and Veblen have brought out, the force 
of emulation is shown not only in the efforts of leaders to surpass 
each other, but by the care of the common run of people to keep 
up to ' decent ' standards of their class, — which are as closely in 



21 8 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

imitation of the class above them as circumstances allow. It 
seems to us there is no need of assuming two instincts — both 
self-assertion and self-abnegation — as McDougall does. One 
wins the largest possible applause by becoming a leader if he can; 
if that is impossible, the next best thing is to court approval by 
falling in with the other sheep in the trail of the lucky leader. Any 
notice he deigns to give us is treasured and has the precious 
quahty of distinction or prestige. 

We have argued at some length above that the thorough-going 
utilitarian explanation of desire for approval is inadequate, 
although the favorable regard of our neighbors toward us imques- 
tionably is a goose which lays for us many golden eggs of individ- 
ual advantage. Apart from other evidence that this propensity is 
one of the strongest of our original motives, we conclude that the 
universal conformity to the mores or customs in all stages of 
civilization is out of all proportion to the individual rewards 
gained or the corporal or supernatural punishment actually 
invoked. 

Many authorities, with Sutherland, believe that the moral cus- 
toms or ideals spring chiefly from the unselfish parental instincts; 
and we have seen that in some circumstances this devotional 
enthusiasm might be transferred by associations to formerly in- 
different objects. But common observation of the way children 
acquire morality, together with the general facts of custom in un- 
civilized peoples, lead the writer to believe with Adam Smith, that 
our neighbor, who is removed from our passions and hence takes 
what is for us a disinterested and unselfish view of our case, and 
whose approval we instinctively crave, is the pivot of our moral 
sentiments. The case is only a few degrees removed from that 
aversion to being thought queer, which makes us conform to some 
of the most irrational social usages. 

In the course of transfers of this enthusiasm we lose conscious- 
ness of its origin, and we only know that we are willing to sacrifice 
our own * interest ' for the sake of an abstract ' principle.' But in 
the present writer's view, the motive power of such principles is in 
the unconscious habit-mechanisms and in the feeling-responses to 
approval, which have now become mere desire for praiseworthi- 



APPLICATIONS TO ECONOMIC WANTS 219 

ness. Self-respect is the term commonly used to point to our 
independence of any punitive suasion, and its name also points 
to the real derivation of this motive from the respect or approval 
of other people. 

In some cases, as in legal, religious, or mere business customs, 
the punishment for violation is consciously borne in mind, but 
more important for most people is the ' disgrace ' (disapproval) of 
being foxmd out and punished, which is even more strongly 
dreaded. On the other hand, whenever the ' sanctions ' of nat- 
ural or social or supernatural punishments or restraints are re- 
moved, the ordinary egoistic motives are likely to undermine the 
custom until it becomes "more honored in the breach than in the 
observance," and then it has no hold. The decay of the ban on 
Sunday recreations in many communities is an example. 

Fashions 

In that peculiar class of customs which we call fashions or 
styles or modes, there must be other instinctive factors. Fashions 
differ from institutions by the rapidity with which they change. 
The innovations are made by leaders of some sort, — in women's 
clothing the leaders are said to be from the demimonde. The pro- 
ducers of articles of style naturally foster changes by manifold 
clever methods, and often it seems that they really make the 
styles. To some extent they do ; during the war governments were 
able to enforce considerable economies of materials by bringing 
about agreements among manufacturers limiting the numbers of 
designs. But in normal times bad guesses of ' what they will 
be wearing ' make one of the ordinary costs of every clothing 
producer. 

It appears that the instincts or quasi-instincts which we have 
grouped under ' curiosity,' including the pursuit of novelty, make 
innovations appealing. Habits are easiest to follow, yet they lead 
to some fatigue and unpleasantness, and so when somebody shows 
a novel rendering of an old theme, and one which respected per- 
sonages are sponsoring, we are inclined to adopt it. Once the 
adoption has gone far enough, the urgency of the social-approval 
pressure is indicated by the proverb "One might as well be dead 
as out of style." 



220 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

Utility and Custom 

The obvious fallibility of customs — that they are often more 
a hindrance than a help to their followers, in the struggle for 
existence — is apt to blind us to the rational basis underl5dng 
them generally. In every case they are the result of some one's 
inference as to a way of getting what he wanted. The inference 
may have been quite too hasty, as in the case of a dance to bring 
rain, or of carrying a rabbit's foot to ' keep away the hoodoo '; 
but some correlation of events is the unit of all our knowledge and 
behavior. There is a continuous transition from the unwarranted 
inference, drawn from chance associations like these, to the 
scientific law based on the largest possible number of coincidences, 
from which we get such a ' custom ' or collective habit as utilizing 
electricity. 

Custom is, in our view, simply a large branch of the tree of 
knowledge; subject, therefore, to plenty of infirmities of error, but 
based on genuine learning and susceptible of steady indefinite 
improvement. In both knowledge and custom, conventional 
arbitrary symbols, such as frock coats or alphabets or the Arabic 
system of numerals, are important; both are fundamentally ways 
of reacting toward the environment, and both are constantly 
being tested by their relative success in want-satisfaction. Both 
are transmitted from generation to generation by imitative learn- 
ing. Many of our reactions are acquired by individual contact 
with the physical enviroimient, — reactions, say to the heat of 
fire, to the ferocity of animals, to the properties of water, etc. In 
many cases each of us individually makes real inventions or dis- 
coveries. But doubtless the larger part of our behavior in detail is 
imitative; it takes advantage of what other people have invented. 
The child is coerced or cajoled into imitating his elders as to eat- 
ing, sleeping, etc., and soon he has a general imitative habit. This 
copying habit carries over so that finally he automatically looks 
about to see how some one else is doing it, when he is confronted 
by a puzzling situation, as in going into a strange cafeteria to eat. 
The pages of anthropology are full of borrowing between tribes or 
nations, of such tricks as fire-making, pottery, analine dyes, and 



APPLICATIONS TO ECONOMIC WANTS 221 

so on. The great characteristic of modern civilization is that it 
embalms discoveries in print, making a cumulative stock of other 
people's experiences. 

But, says the anti-ititellectualist, you have confused conscious 
with imconscious imitation. My interest is in unconscious ab- 
sorption of customary methods and ideas, which are unreflect- 
ingly believed right and true, though in fact they are as apt to be 
wrong as right. The above discussion of reasoning in Chapter XI, 
however, has shown that the transition from * unconscious in- 
ference ' to elaborate trains of reasoning (which include the habit 
"Now I'm thinking awfully hard") is continuous; that the two are 
fundamentally of the same character. The ultimate test of both is 
successful dealing with external nature. 

Unquestionably every human being absorbs all manner of 
tricks from his society's culture, like its language, without reason- 
ing why or wherefore, without realizing all their imphcations, 
without its occurring to him that other methods might be better 
suited to the purpose. The learning process in its early stages 
knows nothing of whys, it is merely a matter of habit-formation 
by repetitions of simultaneous experiences. One * believes,' there- 
fore (that is, acts upon), what he is taught, until some discrep- 
ancy of experience is serious enough to jar him into questioning. 
Reflection, criticism, experiment, in place of contented accept- 
ance of fairly successful means of satisfying wants, is a habit 
which many people never stumble upon. 

It must be remembered that the habits of every one of us con- 
tain mmaerous unnecessary kinks which have never been elim- 
inated by isolation of their results. The baby screams and also 
kicks when he wants his bottle; the bottle comes, apparently in 
response to both. So he is confirmed in that dual signal, though 
the yelling alone would be sufficient. Business men commonly be- 
lieve they are conducting their affairs in the most efficient and 
profitable manner possible; but experimental methods, varying 
the circumstances enough to test each step instead of judging by 
the gross product of all together, give rise to a steady stream of 
successful innovations. Any scientist is acutely conscious of the 
difficulty of isolating causes. 



222 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

Then, of course, there are two other common weaknesses in 
customs and in knowledge of any kind. First, the situation in 
which they were originally formed may have changed so that they 
are obsolete. Henry Adams lamented that his eighteenth-century 
poHtical traditions unfitted hitn for the nineteenth-century world 
of finance. Racial groups of people are constantly going to pieces 
upon contact with neighbors of a different civilization. Secondly, 
the custom may have been started by a crafty teacher principally 
for his own benefit; which case seems to be common among sooth- 
sayers and medicine men, but is by no means limited to them. 
Any animal will use other members of his race, the same as the 
rest of his environment, as best he can in order to satisfy his own 
wants. By instinct and by training his own wants may or may 
not include the welfare of these other members. 

Finally let it be noted, though we shall recur to the point again, 
that a great many of the customs which we unthinkingly adopt 
are perfectly successful, and perhaps have been elaborately proved 
so. The workman in mechanical operations often follows instruc- 
tion charts without knowing anything of the sciences behind 
them. Hence in no case is uncritical acceptance of a habit, in 
itself, any positive argument against the validity of what is ac- 
cepted. 

So much for the influence of custom. The gist of the matter is 
that custom is not, as the historical and institutional economists 
often give us to understand, a power of darkness opposing the 
pure rational faculty of man, but is one phase of his rational ac- 
tivities, and, like the rest of knowledge, is constantly undergoing 
change by rational discoveries or pseudo-discoveries. 

Classifications of Wants 

A few words may now be said about the natural-conventional 
and lower-higher classifications of wants. The transitoriness and 
plasticity which characterize motives (both as to means and ends), 
must make us avoid the assumption that any adult wants are, in 
detail, stereotyped by human nature. The instincts and appetites 
provide seeds, but the growing motives are more responsive to the 
outer situation than any plants to which we might compare them. 



APPLICATIONS TO ECONOMIC WANTS 223 

There seems to be a natural priority ranking among original 
impulses which corresponds roughly to the usual lower-higher 
division. Some psychologists believe with Sherrington that the 
pain-avoiding responses are so imperious or ' prepotent ' under 
stimulation, as usually to inhibit any other responses simultan- 
eously stimulated. Hunger and the parental responses, in their 
most urgent stages, are probably prepotent over sex, and all these 
will naturally shut out the social-approval and aimless manipula- 
tion responses. These * lower ' wants must be satisfied in a degree 
before the ' higher ' can manifest themselves; although it is often 
pointed out that the poorer classes are apt to stiat themselves on 
nourishing food in order to buy conventional necessities. When 
one's energy is spent providing the barest subsistence, obviously 
the wants of culture are not to be developed, and his experience 
contains more of the unpleasantness of clamoring appetites and 
pain and obstructed impulses than is the case when he finds it 
easier to get food and protection. With larger resources at hand, 
more elaboration can be required in all classes of satisfactions, 
food, clothing, and shelter included. Comparisons of budgets 
of families having different incomes show that about the same 
proportion of income is spent on these items as a rule (Engel's 
law). 

But in any case the human animal goes on forming new habits 
from the day of his birth, so that lower as well as higher wants 
prescribe immensely different modes of satisfaction among dif- 
ferent individuals. One man's meat is another man's — or an- 
other tribe's — poison, all depending on differing influences 
which have developed their habits. And the habitual (* artificial ') 
elements often form systems which are stronger than any lower 
desires, — as when a man accepts imprisonment for ' principle,' 
or starves rather than revert to cannibalism. The distinction be- 
tween natural and conventional wants, therefore, in any grown 
person is but a shadowy one. 

A study of the great class of esthetic wants from the psycho- 
economic point of view would be of considerable interest, but the 
present writer has not undertaken it. Veblen, of course, has 
made valuable contributions, but his analysis as a whole seems 



224 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

oversimplified. The study of esthetics, more or less scientific, has 
been a recognized branch of philosophy since Aristotle; and the 
English psychologist Marshall twenty years ago attempted to 
base it upon the psychology of pleasure-pain.^ His psychology, 
however, has been in considerable measure superseded. The 
original tendencies toward manipulation and exploration which 
are loosely called ' workmanship ' and * curiosity ' are doubtless 
important here, as well as instinctive rhythmical vocalization; 
and quite likely idiosyncrasies of color-preference play a part. 

Static and Dynamic 

The incessant changes in wants, together with the correspond- 
ing evolution of knowledge and technology, and the increase of 
population, are the ' dynamic ' factors in economic processes. 

The two series of changes, in wants and in technology, inter- 
act; existing wants always exerting pressure on the productive 
methods, and the alterations in the productive methods, such as 
the growth of cities, giving rise to still other wants. The process 
is, as Veblen says, cumulative, as is also true of any other series of 
events in the natural world. Each stage is a new combination of 
results for the old incessant forces of nature to work further upon. 

The distinction between dynamic or genetic, and static, seems 
to us however to be overdone in economic literature. It is not a 
matter of time or of complexity among the phenomena, nor of 
more or less ' taxonomy,' but simply a matter of more or less 
abstraction. The classical laws of wages and interest, for ex- 
ample, certainly involve cumulative changes in population, food 
supply, and so on, taking long periods of time to work out; but 
they are static, as are most of our laws, in that they abstract cer- 
tain factors in the situation from the rest of the situation and dis- 
regard the * disturbing ' effects of the latter. Any dynamic or 
genetic laws we ever get will be abstractions too, disregarding 
some parts of the crowding flux of reality. There will always be a 
dynamic residue of forces, however, which have not been reckoned 
with or reduced to order in our principles. At present the changes 
in demands are for the most part in this unexplained residue, for 

^ H. R. Marshall, Pain, Pleasure and Esthetics. 



APPLICATIONS TO ECONOMIC WANTS 225 

the general principle of insatiability of all wants tells nothing 
about the ways in which particular wants change and the corre- 
sponding effects on the whole economic system. We may agree 
with Veblen and the other institutional economists that theory on 
this phase of economic processes is neglected and important, but 
we need not accept their conclusions as to the exact way in which 
human instincts, customs and other environmental factors have 
interacted to shape industrial development, — their conclusions 
obviously being based on a very hmited part of the total data 
required. 

Conscious Control of Wants 

There is one more aspect of wants which we must suggest, — 
the possibility of conscious control of them for ulterior ends. 

We are all familiar with this process in advertising and other 
forms of salesmanship or persuasion. ' Selling an idea ' is the con- 
temporary slang equivalent for the Sophists' art. Many books are 
being written on the psychology of advertising, emphasizing the 
ancient device of appealing to the audience's emotions, and taking 
some account of the canons of good taste esthetically. The effec- 
tiveness of mere reiteration is a modern discovery by business 
men. No one could have predicted a priori that simply the dis- 
play of "Uneeda Biscuit" or countless bill-boards and printed 
pages would materially affect the sales of that commodity, but 
now everyone knows that consimiers are predisposed toward a 
product that is kept before their eyes, apart from the real advan- 
tages of trade-marked goods as to uniform quality. 

The psychologists of advertising all insist that the argumenta- 
tive type of appeal has a different applicabiUty from the sugges- 
tive, emotional or esthetic, ' short-circuit ' type. All persuasion 
is, however, essentially argumentative or inferential. The dif- 
ference between the picture of a pretty girl holding a bar of soap, 
and the page of closely-printed paragraphs, is simply one of de- 
gree. In either case, as we need not be told, there is the possibiUty 
of too hasty and unwarranted inference, as when a merchant pro- 
claims that he is "just out of the high rent district," and therefore 
sells for less. The simpler type would not commonly be called a 
logical process, but like the other, it tries to point out to the cus- 



226 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

tomer that this object has the earmarks (cheapness, beauty or 
other suitability) of a class of objects toward which he is in the 
habit of reacting positively. In somewhat similar fashion there is 
pointed out to the mouse the earmark of cheese in our trap, while 
the other circumstances of the case are not emphasized to him. 
This simple physiology of habit (association) is all we mean by 
hasty inference. 

The fallibility of salesmanship as a process of want-satisfac- 
tion, it should be said, is not wholly a matter of ' honesty ' or 
* dishonesty ' in the vendor's statements. All he says may be 
true, and yet the customer may be misled as to the object's 
suitability for his needs. 

We cannot attempt here to go extensively into the applications 
of psychology to advertising. Incidentally it may be remarked, 
however, that most of the current books are founded on McDoug- 
all's psychology, and consequently their fundamentals leave much 
to be desired, from our point of view, regarding the instincts and 
their relations to reason. 

Control of Wants for Public Ends 

With the imderstanding of mental processes which will now be- 
come increasingly available, conscious control over wants may be 
more effectively undertaken for public or altruistic ends. This 
enterprise is very old; not only prophets and statesmen, but un- 
told generations of parents have labored with much success to 
instill better characters into their children. It is traditionally the 
task of the moralist to call people from the pursuit of follies to a 
striving toward (what he considers) better ideals; and an econ- 
omist-moralist has especial competence for suggesting changes in 
material demands which would lead to a fuller general satisfaction 
of wants. The classical demonstrations of the advantage of sav- 
ing over spendthrift consumption, and of the need of moral re- 
straint on the laboring population, are clear cases of this kind. 
Lately, the patent fact that numerous private and public agencies 
are constantly swaying consumers' wants, and that such influenc- 
ing is often publicly harmful though privately profitable, has led 
to the beginning of a "Theory of Economic Guidance," by a keen 



APPLICATIONS TO ECONOMIC WANTS 227 

American economist of the younger generation.^ In his analysis 
it is proposed to show the guidance of economic choices by the 
individual himself, and by commercial, cooperative and public 
agencies, — including the unconscious influences. 

Quite as a matter of course, the ' selling ' methods which have 
been developed in business are being adapted to public purposes, 
and often effectively. Advertisers and artists in all countries were 
mobilized to produce posters, badges, leaflets, banners, lantern 
slides, etc., to fight the Great War, and recruiting, loans, and food 
conservation all were thus aided. Similar devices are often used 
for charitable or religious agencies, such as the Interchurch 
World Movement, the Y. M. C. A., and educational campaigns. 
These naturally are not always so successful as the war propa- 
ganda, for they may not have ' goods ' which are intrinsically so 
desirable to ' sell ' ; and the * selling ' methods may moreover be 
bunglesome. But gradually we may expect to see all the new 
effective arts of persuasion utilized for altruistic purposes, — in- 
cluding frequently even the less scrupulously honest arts. Stand- 
ards of taste may soon be * sold,' many people hope, on a wide 
enough scale to restrict considerably some selling devices, notably 
the bill-board. 

Our distinction between wants for goods as means, and wants for 
goods that are ends in themselves, is useful either in evaluating 
the social effects of private salesmanship or in planning guidance 
directly for public benefit. Obviously a large part of salesman- 
ship is concerned with conveying knowledge to people as to how 
and where they can get what they want. But much of the so- 
called influencing of wants, is simple deception, as to means to- 
ward ends about which there is no dispute. People want, say, a 
cure for tuberculosis, or durable, fast-colored cloth; and the 
vendor falsely, even if unwittingly, persuades them that his goods 
are up to their specifications. The only remedy for this situation is 
the old-fashioned one of more education, more scientific discovery 
of causes. The government can doubtless be expected to enlarge 
its sphere of compulsory market standards, but this again is de- 
pendent on a general increase of knowledge. 

^ J. M. Clark, "Economics and Modern Psychology," Jour. Pol. Econ., 26: 136- 
166 (1918). 



228 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

But there is also a large field for genuine transformation of 
tastes, which includes the development of latent tastes. The pro- 
ducer tries to get people to like his Coca Cola better than other 
things they might buy, or to want to shave every day, — by means 
of his safety razor. ^ This transfer of interest must be accom- 
plished by grafting upon existing interests, as we have explained, 
and by repetition of the appeal in various guises. 

The moralist, from whatever quarter he may come, who is con- 
cerned with getting the public to want the right things, has there- 
fore these same two methods of attack. He may try to enlighten 
them by explaining how they are defeating some of their strongest 
ultimate purposes (or even trivial purposes), such as their per- 
sonal health, their curiosity about the world, the welfare of their 
loved ones or country, or their mere wish for pure food, by be- 
havior which is ill-adapted to these ends, — that is, by their 
wasteful living or because they will buy that rascal Jones' bread. 
If, on the other hand, he finds them getting exactly what they 
want — whiskey, for example — but that their ultimate wants are 
in his view depraved, he can try the grafting, repetition and 
curiosity process, of instilling new final purposes. 

Such a morahst is likely to become impatient at the tedixmi and 
uncertainty of either method, and to long for forcible repression of 
the offending desires. Drastic measures undoubtedly have their 
place, as has whipping or its equivalent in the rearing of children. 
Prohibition of intoxicants, if enforced a generation or two, will 
probably wean us away from any conscious want for alcohol; and 
innumerable other reforms of motives are possible if the environ- 
ment be wisely ordered. But forcible training of this kind, even if 
wise, is hardly feasible without the support of a goodly majority of 
the people, and so there will always remain plenty of reforms in 
wants to be accomplished by persuasive and educative methods. 

^ A. W. Shaw, in "Some Problems of Market Distribution," pp. 41 ff., dis- 
tinguishes between "conscious needs" and "unformulated needs," the latter being 
brought to consciousness by discovery of a new product, such as the safety razor. 



CHAPTER XVI 

UTILITY AND COST 

The dual usage of value of which Adam Smith spoke — value in 
use and value in exchange — remains a plague to us, accentuated 
by the ambiguity of the German Werth, which had to be employed 
by so many value theorists on the Continent. Some economists, 
who have given special attention to the philosophical General 
Theory of Value as well as to the Continental economists, insist 
that value is an absolute, not a relative term, — that it is a quan- 
tity of ' motivating power,' of either the economic, esthetic, moral, 
nutritive, or other variety. The term utility, however, is well 
established in English economic writing for the simple quality of 
' being wanted by some subject,' whereas value in whatever 
usage, implies some sort of comparison or measuring or relation, 
among wants.^ Ours, therefore, will be the traditional usage as 
found, for example, in Marshall; and this chapter will be devoted 
to exploration of the psychological background of utility. 

Objective and Subjective Aspects 

The first step necessary is to correlate as well as may be, the 
objective and subjective aspects of utility. In accordance with 
our previous discussions, we consider the objective accoimt fun- 
damental: a thing has utiHty whenever it is wanted, and it is 
wanted whenever a human being is so constructed as to respond 
positively (in a seeking way) toward it whenever it (directly or 
mediately) stimulates him. Contrariwise, a thing has disutility 
when the subject's response is one of repulsion, i. e., is negative. 
This centering of attention on the behavior of the subject with 
reference to the object is characteristic of economists' practice, 

^ " Wantability," as Fisher suggests, would undoubtedly better convey the econ- 
omist's meaning to the layman, if it were ever established, than utility or desira- 
bility, because of the ethical entanglements of the latter two. 



230 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

though not of their writings on utility.^ It is what Bohm-Bawerk 
and Wicksteed call the ' fact of choice/ though more accurately it 
is a fact of attitude, for we should say that choice occurs only when 
two or more responses are opposed. 

But are we to disinherit, then, the subjective facts of utility, 
which have bulked so large in all discussions of value? There is no 
occasion to do so, so long as they are taken only for what they are 
worth. With each act and want, there is usually a corresponding 
consciousness, or complex of sensation and images, and frequently 
this phase alone is observed.^ And further, the final usance of any 
commodity or service is ordinarily attended by a feeling which 
we call pleasant (or relief from more impleasant) ; which feeling 
has been herein ascribed, in the main, to obscure instinctive reac- 
tions. These feeling-reponses are also reflexly aroused whenever 
the main want rises imaginally to consciousness (as when one 
' imagines ' himself eating an apple) . 

There has been good reason, therefore, for the economist's con- 
ception of utiUty as a wholly subjective affair, pretty well syn- 
onymous with pleasure; as well as ground for the allegation that a 
single utility can never be absolutely measured, since pleasures in 
different minds, or even in the same mind at different times, can- 
not be accurately compared; and for the theory of the hedonic 
calculus. These propositions are based primarily on introspec- 
tion; but consciousness does indeed mirror the behavior-series 
with sufficient accuracy so that the theory of an individual 
calculus of utilities has been immensely serviceable toward ex- 
plaining the facts of value. 

But many disputes over the verisimilitude of this theory are 
cleared up if we always interpret utility in objective terms, be- 
cause the physiological series alone is complete. As soon as a 
response or want has been exercised a nimiber of tunes, with re- 
sults satisfactory on the whole, it becomes a habit involving a 
minimum of calculation, like a man's buying cigarettes, — it may 
even become unconscious, or ' subconscious,' as the Freudians say. 

^ Fisher took a similar stand in his Mathematical Investigations in the theory of 
Value and Prices (1892), p. 5, though many of his later value-transactions are car- 
ried out in the subjective realm. 

2 See Ch. VII, above. 



UTILITY AND COST 23 1 

And it is perfectly clear that the aura of feeling originally con- 
nected with many a want wears away until one feels no pleasure 
in what he is impelled to do. What he does is effective in the mar- 
ket; whether or not he ' knows what he is doing ' or ' likes to do 
it.' It is physiological forces which determine his acts, not 
amounts of pleasure or pain anticipated, — though in most cases 
these are only two ways of saying the same thing. 

The riddles connected with the measurement of a single utility 
can also be solved, apparently, by the objective conception. The 
strength of any one response can be tested by measuring in terms 
of foot-pounds on a draw-bar, or calories of heat given off, the 
amount of energy the subject exerts when this response is fully 
stimulated. Labor is thus the original yard stick of utility, as well 
as the original purchase price of all things; and it is probably not 
true that we are forever limited in our judgments of utility to ob- 
servations of choice between two or more utilities. 

The comparative methods, however, are still available and 
practically are easier to apply. When a situation calling for 
choice arises, anyone can observe which response was stronger, — 
say to keep a dollar, or to gain admission to a ball game. The 
fine gradations of money enable our wants to register their 
strength fairly accurately. If we want to compare utilities be- 
tween persons, however, through either the money or the labor 
standard, we must compare the proportion which each will give 
of his total stock to get the given object, since obviously the richer 
will spend a dollar for a more trivial want than will the poorer. 
Individual differences in sensibility or taste will express them- 
selves, we believe, in the fractions which each person will give up 
of his total stock, and so they need not be reckoned as sources of 
error. In other words, the utility of $100 to a man owning $1000 
is about the same as the utility of $1000 to a man owning $10,000. 

These suggestions of course do not go very far into this subtle 
question, but the important thing is that when we think of utility 
in terms of response-mechanisms, such problems may be attacked 
with the rulers, compasses and scales that are common to all scien- 
tific students, which measurements cannot possibly be applied to 
utihty in the 'mind,' open to one person only, that is seen clear or 



23.2 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

dim according to the time of day or what the subject has just had 
to eat. When there is no other evidence, we can use the subjective 
report to infer what the objective situation is, somewhat as 
physicists have to use appearances to infer what is happening 
within the intangible but consistent springs of their phenomena. 
As psychology progresses, we shall know more and more ac- 
curately what to infer, in objective terms, from our sensations, 
thoughts and feelings; but we know already that an individual's 
mental experience is too vague and incomplete to give anyone a 
true view of the whole causal sequence. Whatever error the 
hedonic calculus may contain, by reason of instincts and blind 
habits which are not fully mirrored in consciousness, we shall 
avoid by attending closely to the behavior. 

' Satisfaction ' or ' gratification ' also are statable objectively. 
Whenever we observe a response, we know that that want was in 
some degree satisfied, and if the subject is thereupon indifferent to 
a repetition of the stimulus we can say the want was completely 
satisfied, — for the time being. 

Diminishing Utility 

But often, as everyone knows, a single stimulation does not 
completely * satisfy ' the want. When one is hungry he keeps on 
eating for some time, if food continues to be available, instead of 
going off to do something else. Listening to a single phonograph 
record, or making a single throw of dice, are crude examples of 
experiences which are usually not sufficiently satisfying to cause 
the response to lose its prepotency. 

And the response gradually becomes weaker, as Jevons and 
Menger make clear, if the identical stimulus is repeated. The 
first record, or the first loaf of bread, at a given time, is * worth ' a 
good deal to the subject; its utihty is high; he will respond quite 
energetically to it. These are various ways of saying the same 
thing. But as a second, third and so on, loaf or record is offered 
him, he wiU do less and less to possess them. The rapidity with 
which his response will reach zero varies, of course, with the com- 
modity and with the physiological state of the subject, but pre- 
sumably a normal curve could be established for each commodity 



UTILITY AND COST 233 

with reference to a social class, with sufficient experimentation. 
Such is the broad principle of diminishing utihty, which has meant 
so much for the theory of value. 

The illustrations from common experience are necessarily 
crude and inexact. We know that in many cases the * appetite ' 
for phonograph music or for whatever satisfaction is under con- 
sideration, is heightened by the first few repetitions ; we know that 
over a stretch of time tastes are altered so that one will enjoy 
much more of a commodity than he did at first. This is because 
in common experience we are dealing each time with a commimity 
or complex of responses, whose members are shifting during the 
experiment. As one settles himself to listen to music, dormant 
responses are aroused, and distracting impulses subside, so that 
his total inclination toward the music is presently stronger than 
it was at first. But if we could dissect out one of the constituent 
responses and watch it in isolation, we should find its energy di- 
minishing from the beginning, if the stimulus remained constant. 

That is the Weber-Fechner law of psychology. It is usually 
stated from the standpoint of equal increments of sensation (just 
perceptible differences), in which case the objective stimulus is 
said to increase at some geometric rate in order to give the simple 
arithmetic increase in sensation. For example, if the subject 
could just distinguish the weight of one ounce on the skin from 
two oimces, he could probably not discriminate between two 
ounces and three ounces; it would require something over three, 
perhaps four, to make a perceptible difference. This proposition 
can be put into the form familiar to economists by saying that 
there is diminishing sensibiHty per ounce of stimulus. The funda- 
mental cause of the phenomenon is presumably fatigue of the 
response-mechanism or adaptation in the sense-organ.^ 

The connection between diminishing utility and the Weber- 
Fechner law has often been affirmed and denied by authorities of 
some competence, ever since the principle of diminishing utility 
was introduced into economics. The Weber-Fechner law refers 

^ For a recent experimental study and biochemical hypothesis of this ' fatigue,' 
see the article by Selig Hecht above referred to, " Photic Sensitivity of Ciona In- 
testinalis," Jour. Gen. Physiol., i: 147-166 (1918). 



234 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

to sensations; has it anything to do with likes and dislikes? One 
of the most recent pronouncements by an eminent psychological 
authority is that of Titchener: 

There is some little evidence that affection, on its intensive side, obeys 
Weber's Law. ... At any rate, it is true as a general rule that what gives us 
pleasure or displeasure is roughly proportional to our income, our age and 
status, our ambition, our standard of comfort. If I am starting a library 
with a hundred volumes, and a single book is given me, I am as pleased — 
other things being equal — as I should be by the addition of ten volumes to a 
library of a thousand. . . . AU these things sadly need experimental con- 
firmation; but there seems no reason why affective intensity should not, and 
there seems to be some evidence that in fact it does, foUow the same law as 
the intensity of sensation.' 

It is evident from his illustrations, however, that the psy- 
chologist's knowledge on the point is about as inexact as the 
economist's. 

The difficulties in putting the two principles together have 
been mainly two : the irregular operation of diminishing utihty in 
crude economic examples, and the gap which psychologists have 
usually drawn between affection (pleasure-pain) and sensation. 
The first stumbling block, of the irregularity of the diminution, 
we tried to account for a moment ago, by the undoubted shiftings 
which are constantly taking place among the constituent-reflexes 
of any gross response. The second difficulty is removed for us 
by our conception that the diffuse and unlocalized consciousness 
called affection is merely the sensation-correlates of instinctive 
inner bodily reactions. In other words, we believe * feelings ' of 
liking and disliking are composed wholly of sensations, and so of 
course are subject to Weber's Law. So long as fresh, recuperated 
positive reflexes continue to be drawn into the activity, the gen- 
eral zest of enjoyment is kept up or increased, but that is a matter 
of successive enjoyments, not the repetition of an identical 
stimulus.^ 

1 Textbook of Psychology, pp. 259-260 (printing of 1915). 

2 See above, Ch. X, for development of our view of pleasure-pain. It does not 
differ much from Titchener's, who says he considers affections " as mental proc- 
esses of the same general kind as sensations, and as mental processes that might, in 
more favorable circumstances, have developed into sensations." He "hazards the 
guess that the peripheral organs of affection are the free afferent nerve-endings." 
Ibid., pp. 260, 261. 



UTILITY AND COST 235 

Disutility and Cost 

What now of disMtility , or experiences which are repugnant, 
yet are submitted to for the sake of a more than counterbalancing 
utility? Much of our labor — that is to say, the efforts we put 
forth to satisfy our wants — evidently has this disagreeable 
quality; and the restraint we put on urgent present desires, as in 
saving our money, is often markedly unpleasant. This negative 
side of the hedonic calculus would seem to make our behaviorist 
project impractical. If we see a man digging a ditch for five 
dollars, how do we know without asking his report on his con- 
sciousness, whether the experience is wholly agreeable, or if the 
pleasures to be secured by the five dollars are only just sufficient 
to overcome the repulsion of the task? 

True, the digger's introspection would be the quickest way to 
get a line on the situation, although clearly he would be unable to 
give a wholly accurate report as to how much surplus of utility he 
was securing. But we could soon make some progress by objec- 
tive methods, if we removed the five dollars from the situation, 
and observed whether he continued to dig. We have here a com- 
plex of reactions, stimulated at once, whose tendencies are in op- 
posite directions. The bitter must be taken with the sweet, or 
the sweet not at all, and the stronger reaction prevails, — it may 
be either toward acceptance or rejection of the complex object 
offered. Psychologists frequently experiment by offering varying 
doses of reward and of punishment, distraction or irritation insep- 
arably, and they can conclude more accurately than can the 
subject, how much more willing he is than unwilling in any given 
combination. 

The mechanics of the matter are, of course, quite intricate and 
in large part unknown, but we can be reasonably confident that 
whenever the subject feels his task to be irksome, yet that he must 
stick to it because it gets him something he wants (enough to 
overcome the repugnance), his total energy is divided between 
doing the job and trying to run away from it. When the task is 
wholly pleasant there is no such division. 



236 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

When the situation is wholly unpleasant, if there are no uncon- 
scious habits impelling him to accept it, then he is wholeheartedly- 
avoiding it. 

The difference between utility and disutility, therefore, is not 
between a psychic impression and the energy put forth to realize 
it, for no psychic impression, either pleasant or unpleasant, can 
occur except by means of a response which involves release of 
energy. There are simply positive responses, called pleasant, and 
negative responses, called unpleasant. The difference is in direc- 
tion of the agent's efforts, whether he is seeking or tolerating the 
stimulus, or is avoiding, repulsing it. When both are operating 
simultaneously, the gross result will not indicate the strength of 
each, as total profits of a business does not reveal which depart- 
ments are profitable and which unprofitable, but the elements are 
nevertheless statable in objective terms and verifiable by objec- 
tive experiments. 

As a result of this consideration of disutility, we must ampUfy 
our definition of want, to conform to common usage by econ- 
omists. A want is, — not merely a response-mechanism, but a 
response in the positive direction, which may mean efforts to 
escape from, or to avoid, an unpleasant situation by going per- 
haps into one which is only less impleasant. 

Ultimate Cost 

The ultimate nature of cost is now seen to be definable in either 
one of two ways, which have been confused as one. "Efforts and 
sacrifices" are usually considered the real costs of production, 
whether in work or in saving. But sacrifice, if it means pain or 
unpleasantness, is merely one kind of * effort ' or response; 
wholly pleasurable responses also involve effort, in the sense of 
depletion of energy. Some writers again, such as Green and 
Davenport, emphasize ' opportunity-cost ' (to the individual, 
though not of production as a whole), which is no positive pain 
but only the foregoing of one specific pleasure in order to accept 
another one.^ A recent discussion asserts (apparently following 

^ D. I. Green, "Pain-Cost and Opportunity-Cost," Quar. Jour. Econ. 8: 218- 
229 (1893), 



UTILITY AND COST 237 

out Wicksteed's line of thought) that cost is always ultimately 
the most urgent excluded desire.^ 

There are, therefore, three possible situations as to cost, de- 
pending on the feeling-reactions of the subject, and no one def- 
inition of cost will be adequate to all. 

1. The activity of production may be felt as wholly unpleas- 
ant; that is, the avoiding responses aroused would immediately 
put a stop to it if there were not the pull of anticipatory responses 
connected with the reward. 

2. The work undertaken may be rather pleasant in itself, re- 
gardless of the reward, but some other activity would be more 
attractive if the reward had not been attached to the first. Really 
these two situations differ only in degree, for there is always some- 
thing else we prefer to do when what we are doing is irksome; and 
no matter how pleasant our task may be, we cannot recall that 
other, more agreeable experience, foregone without a pang. So 
that opportunity- and pain-cost merge together; both refer to 
counter-responses which must be overcome by reward if the costly 
work is to be undertaken. In both cases, by objective experiments 
the subject's attitudes can be discovered and the mystery of his 
mind, his * feeling,' is not essential. 

3 . The work is the thing the subject prefers to do, regardless of 
reward, hence there is no pain-cost. Some home-gardening and 
many other profitable recreations are of this nature. Although 
' labor,' in the form of exertion, is the price or rather the correlate 
of all utihty, yet labor is not always irksome. Ultimate cost is 
properly — and usually — connected with counter-responses 
pulling against the costly activity, and these coimter-responses 
are partly pleasant (seeking something else), partly unpleasant 
(merely toward avoiding this experience). We can call these re- 
spectively opportunity- and pain-costs, remembering that prob- 
ably every instance of costly production combines the two. 

Psychic Income 

The term ' psychic income,' popularized among economists by 
Fetter and Fisher, may now be noticed. Psychic income is ap- 

^ M. Roche-Agussol, La Psychologie Economique chez les Anglo-Americains 
(Montpellier, 19 18). 



238 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

plied to wholly subjective entities, — " Desirable results produced 
in the realm of feeling," according to Fetter;^ "Sensations, 
thoughts, feelings, volitions, and all psychical events," according 
to Fisher.^ The latter distinguishes these subjective results from 
"enjoyable objective services," as of nourishment, housing and 
warming, and says: 

It is usually recognized by economists that we must not stop at the stage 
of this objective income. There is one more step before the process is com- 
plete. Indeed, no objective services are of significance to man except as 
they are preparatory to subjective satisfactions.^ 

Our objections to this concentration on the subjective aspect have 
been sufficiently set forth. We agree with critics of the ' psychic 
accounting ' economists that their scheme is essentially the 
hedonic calculus of Bentham, though we consider this fact much 
less damaging to either party than do the critics. The question of 
the reahty of refined psychic bookkeeping in the individual mind, 
we shall deal with in the following chapter on the valuation 
process. 

^ Economic Principles, p. 27. 

2 Nature of Capital and Income, p. 166. 

^ Ihid., p. 165. Cf. Fetter, Principles (1904), Ch. VI. 



CHAPTER XVII 

PSYCHOLOGY OF THE VALUATION PROCESS 

' Valuation ' is here used to denote the process of balancing 
utilities against one another, leading to the judgment that A is 
wanted so many times as much as B. ' Choice ' we use in the nar- 
rower sense of mere preference, and hence signifying not ' how 
many times,' but ' A is preferred to B.' ' UtiHty ' should perhaps 
always be used in the final sense, in which case it is the ultimate 
consumer who is debating; but there would be some point in 
speaking of ' derived utiHty ' — the want of a merchant, derived 
from the ultimate wants of the consumer — as behind the mer- 
chant's money demand. Our problem is to translate the econ- 
omist's concept of valuation into modem psychological terms. 

Values depend upon individual acts, choices and valuations. 
But by no means all economic acts can accurately be called 
choices, for some are not the results of calculation. There is much 
economic behavior, from taking the trolley car to laying a brick 
wall, which flows from habitual responses that are unopposed and 
direct, like the animal's response to food. A Benthamite might 
argue at length that it is a choice between doing and not doing, 
etc., but our point is that such usage would fail to discriminate 
the important situation which arises when there are two or more 
opposing responses stimulated at the same time. The subject's 
' mind,' that is, his stream of images, reflects subjectively the 
battle going on in his nerve-circuits. It is, as usual, the latter 
aspect of this process of calculation which we shall try to survey, 
although unconscious calculation (of which we get a hint in our 
dreams) is presumably a much less important economic factor 
than are the unconscious direct, unopposed, habitual responses. 

We have indicated our conception of the mechanism of choice 
in connection with our discussion of the will, and of McDougall's 
idea of ' reasonableness.' ^ It is parallel to reasoning. An ambig- 

1 See above, Ch. XII. 
339 



240 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

uous situation arouses antagonistic, or to some extent mutually 
exclusive, motives. Overt action is inhibited while the various 
responses successively predominate on the imaginative behavior- 
level, and thus explore the ' consequences ' of each possible choice 
so far as they are ' foreseen ' by the agent. 

This foreseeing, of course, depends wholly on whatever associa- 
tions the subject has from his own past, and so he makes perhaps 
the most egregious blunders as to what the actual consequences of 
any choice would be. Pavlov's dog, after training, ' foresees ' 
that he will soon be chewing food when the red light appears, but 
he may have completely misjudged the experimenter's intention. 
But the imaginal consequences or effects, in their turn, are stimuli 
which arouse other motives of the subject, which at the beginning 
were not seen to be involved. When these are aroused (to the low 
tension of images) , they lend their strength to the response which 
has in a way ' promised ' to gratify them. Their strength means 
here, not voting power, but energy toward moving the body in a 
certain way. 

Since most motives have some hedonic feeling correlated with 
them, the process of reflection is in considerable measure a cal- 
culus of pleasures and pains. The responses correlated with 
pleasant feeling mostly urge our body one way; those of unpleas- 
antness in another. But this parallelism, as we have seen, is not 
complete. Some unpleasant motives like our ' sense of grim duty ' 
are physiologically effective in driving us in the line of greatest 
resistance, according to the subjective view, and so the hedonic 
calculation does not exhaust the situation. Only a full observa- 
tion of the facts of behavior, including minute processes within 
the body, would reveal the whole story of our every-day choices 
or valuations. 

When we come to the market place, we find dealers absorbed in 
calculations which are reasoning, discovery, invention, rather 
than choosing among utilities. Their desire to make the largest 
profit possible, within the rules of the game, is fairly constant; 
the problem is how to make it. Their calculations take into ac- 
count, not merely all manner of purely physical facts, like rains in 
the cotton-belt, but also numerous facts of consumers' desires, so 



PSYCHOLOGY OF THE VALUATION PROCESS 241 

far as the dealers can discover them. Philosophically it can be 
said that the dealers respond to psychical facts, to consumers' 
future choices, but proximately they are responding to black 
marks on paper and soimds of voices, from which they infer the 
future trends, Uke the dog drawing crude ' inferences ' as to future 
eatiQg dehghts from the red light stimulus. Dealers in the market 
respond generally to the broad, habitual experience that a larger 
supply can be sold only at a lower price per unit than can a small 
supply.^ 

Utility Curves and Demand Curves 

We shall return to the subject of calculation presently, but let 
us now carry forward the connection of utility with exchange 
value. 

The protest that demand does not run wholly parallel to utility, 
because the rich man's offer of a dollar does not represent the 
same utility as the poor man's offer of a dollar, and that it is 
therefore misleading to speak of exchange value ever being deter- 
mined chiefly by utility ("one side of the scissors doing the cut- 
ting," or of production being directed by utility, as distinguished 
from demand) has been frequently made, and so far as it goes it 
can hardly be questioned. One might still argue that the rich 
man's demand may be more important to society as a whole, be- 
cause his contribution to production is perhaps greater than the 
poor man's, but either proposition seems sufficiently obvious so 
that we will take both for granted. 

But supposing incomes equal, to what extent is the declining 
composite demand-curve dependent upon declining individual 
utility-curves of the same general shape? Expositions of value 
usually treat the aggregate demand curve as the summation, in 
monetary terms, of the utility curves of consumers, and ascribe 
declining demand chiefly to diminishing utility. In our opinion, 
too much credit is thus given to the diminishing utility principle 

1 For important qualifications of this proposition, see G. B. Dibblee, Laws of 
Supply and Demand (1912), Taussig, " Is Market Price Determinate?" Quar. Jour. 
Econ., May, 192 1. Dibblee gives an interesting and suggestive and somewhat 
heterodox discussion of psychological factors in supply and demand based on sub- 
jective subtleties, with much appeal, however, to business events, somewhat in the 
manner of Wicks teed. 



242 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

in its simplest form, and not enough to the technical facts of dif- 
ferent uses of any commodity. The declining price-offer per unit 
of an increasing supply of potatoes or candy, as well as of steel 
ingots, seems to us to be due rather to the less urgent uses to 
which further imits of a stock can be put (including speculative 
uses in the future, which play so large a part in the actual elas- 
ticity of any market with reference to price and supply), than to 
gradual saturation of any one class of consmners' wants, which is 
what diminishing utility is usually thought to refer to. Of course 
the less urgent wants are gradually satiable also, at a given time, 
so that diminishing utility operates throughout the whole range, 
but that there are several wants of different urgency, any of 
which can be satisfied by the same commodity, is a tremendously 
important factor in demand, which in an exact analysis should not 
be lumped together as ' diminishing utility.' 

It should be remembered also that these ' less urgent uses ' are 
sharply divided into final uses and productive uses. A less urgent 
final use for water, say, is for bathing; while a less urgent use for 
steel is in a machine-part where cheaper iron will do nearly as 
well. Practically all production goods show this * diminishing 
productivity ' in a series of different uses, and this hierarchy of 
uses of producers' goods, as well as the two diminutions of utility 
above-mentioned of the consumption-goods into which they 
finally pass, plays its part in determining the shape of the de- 
mand curve. 

Another criticism to be made against the usual treatment of 
utihty by the mathematical or ' psychological ' schools, relates to 
the method of infinitesimal increments. These writers often ap- 
ply mathematical formulae to various problems in utiHty in such 
a way that many readers believe the writers assume that any 
individual man does in fact make indefinitely minute calculations. 
Ridicule of such an assumption is of course the easiest possible 
task, and this misconception of the mathematical economists' 
work is in considerable degree responsible for all the controversies 
over the hedonic calculus. 

Yet economists have long said that wants are for concrete 
goods, such as motor cars, and not for miscroscopic units of pleas- 



PSYCHOLOGY OF THE VALUATION PROCESS 243 

ure, while Jevons pointed out the highly significant proposition 
that the actions of large numbers of people show a regularity 
which individual acts do not exemphfy. This inertia of large 
groups of mortal behavior-facts has always been the basis of 
mathematical calculations on mortality, suicide and other vital 
phenomena, by statisticians; and it is likewise fundamental to 
mathematical economics, as Marshall and Pigou well know. 

To accuse mathematical economists of assuming an impossible 
man is just as reasonable as to accuse a vital statistician of sup- 
posing that any inhabitant who moves from the First Ward to the 
Second Ward will live just 1.253 years longer by reason of his 
change. Aggregate market demands, like aggregate mortahty, 
accidents, and almost any other vital quantities, vary by in- 
definitely small amounts with changes in controlling factors like 
price or fashion or bacterial content of the water supply. And so 
demand-curves are continuous and may be investigated by the 
most elaborate calculus, with the certainty that those folks who 
will pay forty cents as readily as twenty cents a pound for sugar, 
and other similar irregularities, will be offset by other * errors ' in 
the opposite direction. Any natural science depends on exactly 
the same procedure. But individual utility curves are not amen- 
able to such handling; our straight perpendicular lines of consider- 
ably differing lengths express more accurately the situation there. 
If a few simple analogies were thus employed, and ' utility ' used 
more carefully, mathematical economics would be better appre- 
ciated. 

Substitution; Consumer's Surplus 

There are two kinds of substitution relevant to value. A good 
may satisfy any of two or more wants, or one want may be satis- 
fied by each of several goods. Whichever of the three causes men- 
tioned above operates to make utility diminish, if several units of 
any good are available (say poimds of potatoes), the subject 
need not give more for any imit than he finds it necessary to give 
in order to satisfy his least urgent want among the wants that can 
be satisfied with the units available, or at the price ruling. This 
want is the marginal utility (Dd in the diagram), with which con- 
ception the reader is assumed to be familiar. The possibility of 



244 



ECONOMIC MOTIVES 



substitution is necessary, it is seen, as well as the principle of 
diminishing utility, in order that marginal utility may determine 
value, for if one must take or leave all the units, his action is ruled 
by total utility, — by all the uses that can be made of the stock. 
Now since he pays for each imit according to his marginal 
utiHty, there is said to be a consumer's surplus or rent, consisting 
of the gross amount by which all the prior utiKties exceed the 
marginal. In the diagram, it is the sum of Qa, Rb and Sc. The 



utiHties and fractions thereof are commensurable absolutely, we 
beUeve, in terms of fractions of his total energy which the subject 
is prepared to expend in each case; but more practically they are 
measured by the diminishing sums of money which he will give 
for the successive units of the good. 

An important question is, what does our psychology say as to 
the reality of consumers' surplus? Or rather, is it as accurately 
expressible as the diagrams represent, or may we only say that in 
many cases one feels vaguely that he has ' got more than his 
money's worth ' ? 

Properly understood, we believe the diagrams tell a true story. 
It is obvious, of course, that if you add up the total utiHty of all 



PSYCHOLOGY OF THE VALUATION PROCESS 245 

the things which anybody purchases, the sum will far exceed his 
total purchasing power, because what he ' saves ' of the amount 
he would be willing to pay for the first articles he buys, he can use 
toward purchase of the next articles. His total available energy 
remains constant, and the mental correlates (sensations and 
images) are about constant in quantity too. A series of good 
bargains will, however, take the agent out of a pain economy into 
a pleasure economy; that is, his activities become on the whole 
more pleasant, because he is able to avoid the extremes of misery 
which privation of economic goods may mean. This calculation, 
to be sure, is static; his wants are constantly changing and may 
put him back into a pain economy again, as he becomes dis- 
contented with the life which he formerly thought would be so 
satisfying. A want based on prestige, as most wants for diamonds, 
would probably disappear entirely, if the good got very cheap, 
and then of course any possibility of consumer's surplus would be 
gone. But at any one time the utilities we represent by our lines 
are grounded in solid physiological mechanisms. Our subject can 
be counted on to exert himself to the full amount of Aa for one 
pound of potatoes, if necessary ; and if he gets it for AQ he has 
saved Qa in energy for something else, although he may never 
think about this saving. 

As in so many other instances, the conscious report of con- 
sumer's surplus is Incomplete. To ascertain this surplus exactly 
it is necessary to know how much the agent would pay (do) for a 
given unit if he had to, in order to get it. But we rarely ask ourselves 
that question; we are accustomed to buying matches at a penny a 
box, bread at a dime a loaf, water at four dollars a year, and sel- 
dom * realize ' that we are getting an enormous surplus in utility 
on them. But the responses indicated by our diagrams are there, 
just the same, ready to deliver certain proportions of our resources 
any time the situation calls for extreme payments, and so the 
surpluses might be called ' implicit.' ^ 

^ Dibblee argues that demand-curves are incalculable, because the subject can- 
not foretell what he will give until the situation arises, — for example for a major 
operation for his child. This is true in the subjective realm, but the power that will 
be exerted in the test is already latent in his bodily structures, like the steam and 
mechanisms of an engine. It is these existent but latent responses which utility and 
demand-cxirves refer to. 



246 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

Differences in the Accuracy of Calculations 

As we have reiterated in many connections, there is no a priori 
rule as to the accuracy of any individual's calculations. None can 
be completely accurate, for nobody knows all the consequences 
which will follow from any of his acts. Each of us is liable to be 
deceived as to the durabiHty or stylishness of the clothes we buy. 
If any theorems of the accepted economic principles are depend- 
ent on the assumption of human infallibility in inferring the 
ultimate consumption utilities from concrete goods (as Veblen 
and his sympathizers appear to believe) , of course those theorems 
are doomed. This school of critics further insinuate that if 
people get enjoyments which are based on false suppositions, our 
assumption of human ' rationality ' breaks down doubly. The 
consumer of a certain medicine, for example, believes himself 
benefited by it, but physiological research may some day prove 
that the stuff really harmed him. That consumer, Veblen would 
say, is not getting a real satisfaction, and he is a living protest 
against the hollo wness of economic theory. 

Economics would indeed be in a bad way if it refused to deal 
with any want until it had explored all the ' implications ' of the 
want and found them scientifically justified. The ' rationality ' 
which we do assume is merely some ability to learn connections 
between present goods or situations (such as land, iron ore, oil 
wells, teddy bears), and future final utilities, which faculty every- 
one (especially the associationists) has always known to be 
lamentably imperfect. That economist who is supposed to assume 
an infalHbly calculating subject, is merely a man of straw. 

At the same time it is true that many of the propositions of eco- 
nomics, particularly those optimistic ones as to relative profits 
depending on proportionate services rendered, if put into absolute 
form must have the proviso "This is what would happen if 
people knew enough." That is the ' economic man '; an abstrac- 
tion from reality but no more discreditable to the economist than 
the spherical earth is to the geographer. 

We have not gone into the psychology of individual differences 
even so far as it is now attainable, but as knowledge of this sub- 



PSYCHOLOGY OF THE VALUATION PROCESS 247 

ject develops it will be highly useful to economic theory in refer- 
ence to human ability to reason from ends to means, and vice 
versa. Our investigation did, nevertheless, disclose some partic- 
ulars with which accuracy of calculation varies between indi- 
viduals. 

Most obvious is simple differences in knowledge, which dif- 
ferences are due partly to variations in innate learning capacity, 
and partly to discrepancies in opportunity. How many "mute 
inglorious Miltons" are smothered by lack of opportunities is a 
large question on which research is going forward in many direc- 
tions, but there can be Uttle question that the most brilliant genius 
would not learn a great deal of the world about him without the 
facilities of subsistence and interchange of experiences, by word of 
mouth and by symbols, which have been laboriously developing 
through the millenia. To illustrate by a common contrast, the 
country boy coming to the city recognizes little but agricultural 
possibilities inherent in a vacant lot; whilst after he has made his 
way up in the business world, the knowledge thus accumulated 
enables him to deduce manifold possible uses of the same lot. It 
is the old proposition that good reasoning in a given situation de- 
pends first of all upon a stock of knowledge, or associations, 
relevant to that situation. 

Now most of our knowledge we get second-hand, from tradi- 
tion, teaching, or custom. Otherwise advancement of knowledge 
would never be possible. We get it moreover in a condensed form, 
and we have no conception of a large part of the ' assumptions ' 
which are impHcit in our behavior. The farmer or the carpenter 
knows few scientific facts about the physical forces that he is 
successfully manipulating. Each art is made up of thousands of 
details, become customary, which were once in some sense dis- 
covered. The individual farmer could often give no reason, or 
only a foolish one, for cross-breeding stock or rotating crops; and 
of course numerous parts of the procedure of everyone could not 
finally be justified on grounds of efficiency, if everything were 
known. 

But with all due allowance to the institutional economists for 
mistaken customs, there is a good deal more scientific ground for 



248 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

our behavior than there is of conscious reasoning it out, because 
all manner of the ready-made customs or conclusions which we 
adopt, do happen to be sound, and well-adapted to our practical 
use, — so that there is no occasion for us to inquire back of them. 
Such is the case with logarithmic tables and with rotation of 
crops; if the individual accepts them bUndly, that does not argue 
against their adaptiveness. There is a fairly steady sifting of 
customary art in the direction of efficiency, — first because crit- 
ical and experimenting individuals are always demonstrating 
improved processes; and second, because as in the cat's learning 
the puzzle-box, the essential steps toward satisfaction must al- 
ways be gone through, while the unessential are occasionally 
omitted and so do not so strongly tend to become fixed habits.^ 

And hence, if people in buying land do not always go through 
all the lightning-calculations of utilities, and draw all the infer- 
ences which the marginal utility theory, according to dissenters 
calls for, it does not follow that the ultimate consumers' utilities 
are so remotely connected with the value of present goods such as 
land. Nor is it necessary to this theory to suppose that all the 
calculations which are in fact made by a given agent, would have 
been made by him if he had been born into a primitive society. Of 
course the customs or institutions of his society have contributed 
to his mental equipment, but the active factor in value is not a 
shadowy institution but the man in the market, a rational agent, 
whose behavior is influenced, according to the ordinary learning 
processes, by what he sees other men doing. 

Another cause of variability in the accuracy of valuations lies in 
the apparent fact that certain desires seem to be more importu- 
nate in some people than in others. When some men are warned 
in the plainest terms what will come of their drinking, or other 
short-sighted conduct, they are nevertheless unable to resist the 
impulse. Some of us are * carried away ' by anger, shame, etc., 
more than others. This means that certain responses — in given 
individuals — are so strong when aroused, relative to others 
which are then active only imaginatively, that the future utilities 
are very heavily discounted, and the agent is less ' rational,' in 
1 See discussion of this point, suggested by Watson, above, in Ch. XI. 



PSYCHOLOGY OF THE VALUATION PROCESS 249 

the sense of being farsighted, than his competitors are in similar 
external circumstances. 

Finally, there are two more sources of variability among in- 
dividuals, which we have noticed in connection with reasoning: 
the habit of making thorough diagnosis of new situations, and 
innate reasoning ability. Careful procedure in considering all 
aspects of a problem before action is clearly useful, and it con- 
stitutes part of the value of any scientific training. VariabiHty in 
power to reason, we are just beginning to learn about, through cer- 
tain of the intelligence tests in which success does not depend on 
formal education or home culture. 

What the average human accuracy is in valuation, therefore, 
the psychologist has no means of determining in general terms. 
It depends on the complexity of the situation and the information 
of the valuer, etc. Economic statistics (behavior facts) in the 
various circumstances, as in purchases of land or teddy bears, are 
the best guides to theory on this point. 

Other Factors in Value; Competition 

Besides the psychological principles we have been discussing 
there are many technological factors which play large roles in the 
determination of particular values. Diminishing returns, increas- 
ing returns, joint supply, joint demand, are familiar names for 
analyses of some of these important habits of matter. One of the 
most significant is the principle of proportionality, or diminishing 
productivity, which has been expounded so fully by Professor 
Carver. There are natural (and variable) proportions in which 
water and other elements can be used in agriculture, for example; 
if the farmer has * plenty ' of water relative to his other materials, 
he would give nothing for more water, even though he would give 
almost anything rather than be deprived of all that he has. In an 
irrigating country, on the other hand, most of the farmers' quar- 
rels and litigation are concerned with the water. The water has 
considerable economic value, in the latter case. We can do more, 
in terms of final utilities, with additional units of the relatively 
scarce materials than with more of the relatively abundant; and 
we gradually learn to react toward them economically, — to strive 



250 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

hardest to possess these things that will ' produce ' the greatest 
utilities. But as our concern is primarily with psychological fac- 
tors in economics, we shall make no attempt to cover these tech- 
nological phases of value. 

The psychological roots of competition are, however, of much 
interest. 

It is from the general interaction of all wants with the complex 
environment that economic value emerges. We may think of non- 
economic values, in the sense of comparisons among such wants as 
are called ethical, religious, political, social, etc. It is the same 
question. How many of A are wanted as much as B? We speak 
often of a ' choice between evils,' and of ' this picture being pret- 
tier than that.' Economic goods are wanted ultimately for all 
these purposes, so that the earmark of things economic is simply 
the convenient and arbitrary one of ' goods which are ordinarily 
peaceably exchanged.' 

But ' peaceably ' is a relative term, for there are numerous 
forms of human conflict, including economic competition. The 
main interest for us is in the question, how do limits upon com- 
petition progress? The human physiological endowment, placed 
in our natural world, inevitably gives rise to some competition. 
First, as we have seen, there are antagonisms between wants or re- 
sponses within one body, — as well as certain harmonies. Rela- 
tive to other persons, numerous of any subject's desires are strictly 
selfish, and as population increases (due to certain desires), the 
fact of scarcity of goods involves conflict. Even if population 
were voluntarily checked, it is likely that the emulative, pug- 
nacious, and esthetic impulses would still cause some contention 
over nature's bounty. Obviously not all wants are egoistic, — the 
motives of family love, friendship, honor and compassion all 
soften the strife.^ 

It should be noticed that these motives do not contradict the 
general theory of valuation, nor do they overcome the discrep- 
ancies between wants and goods. The father who goes hungry 

1 Many apparently altruistic desires have a self-reference which is exclusive. 
The local magnate, for example, may want various charities which benefit his com- 
munity, but these are to be known to all the world as his benefactions. We are all too 
familiar with various kinds of unselfishness with ' strings tied to them.' 



PSYCHOLOGY OF THE VALUATION PROCESS 25 1 

that his family may eat feels keenly the fact of scarcity, and he 
has satisfied as many of his wants, in the order of their urgency, 
as the situation will permit, which is just what the theory of value 
predicts he will do. So of any altruistic act in business; it is a dis- 
turbing factor in the theory of exchange values, but not to the 
theory of individual valuation, for the agent has simply bought 
the satisfaction of his charitable want by foregoing his want of 
wealth. We must observe too that the most altruistic motives 
often enter into self-interested desire for wealth. No one can 
carry out many of his good intentions without some material re- 
sources; in fact substantially every person does have many un- 
selfish uses for his wealth. In the market, where most of the 
people he deals with are personal strangers, it is probable that 
each one will strive to get all he can for his product.^ Self-interest, 
therefore, which is assumed by economists to be prevalent in 
business transactions, is not at all a matter of egoism or selfishness 
in all motives; and in fact, among any group of men who are 
equally canny in business we shall find various degrees of altruism 
when it comes to spending their incomes. 

It is not to be assumed, either, that the poHcy of getting full 
market value of what one has to sell — the policy dictated by self- 
interest — is necessarily in the long run a less benevolent policy 
than that of selling according to the supposed circumstances of 
the purchaser. One of the greatest contributions of Adam Smith 
and his followers was the demonstration that this self-interest 
poKcy, if combined with wise consumption, does tend toward the 
most economical satisfaction of human wants, — though the bus- 
iness man himself least suspects it.^ Carver has supplemented this 
line of thought by showing that in the field where wants are iden- 

^ Cf. Warner Fite, "Moral Valuations and Economic Laws," Jour. Phil. Psy., 
etc., 14: 5-19 (1917). 

^ " It is to no purpose, that the proud and unfeeling landlord views his extensive 
fields, and without a thought for the wants of his brethren, in imagination con- 
sumes himself the whole harvest that grows upon them. . . . The capacity of his 
stomach- bears no proportion to the immensity of his desires, and will receive no 
more than that of the meanest peasant. The rest he is obliged to distribute among 
those, who prepare, in the nicest manner, that little which he himself makes use of, 
among those who fit up the palace in which this little is to be consumed," etc. — 
Theory of Moral Sentiments, Pt. IV, ch. i. 



252 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

tical with needs, production so as to maximize profits is exactly 
the same policy as would be dictated by benevolence, since it 
is in supplying the things most urgently wanted that the largest 
profits are to be made.^ The person who wants to do business 
philanthropically is likely to give his charity indiscriminatingly, 
since it falls to the people who happen to come into his sales- 
room or to seek his employ. Often his chances of doing good 
would be about as great if he threw his money into any crowd 
on the street. 

The egoistic motives may be ' harnessed ' for the general good 
in several ways, and the principal harness is custom. In the 
earliest days of our race, we may suppose, competition was mainly 
physical, employing fists, teeth, or crude weapons. But the most 
primitive societies of which we have direct knowledge have set 
some limits of custom on spontaneous uprisings of contention. 
Members must settle their quarrels without intratribal murder 
or wife-stealing, let us say, or they may accumulate possessions 
only on condition of giving the medicine man a tribute. By 
artificial arrangements the egoistic motives of fear — of physical 
or of supernatural pimishment — have been set against the other 
egoistic motives to violence. 

Quite early the emulative, social-approval, instincts are thus 
harnessed. This propensity pushes children and men into a race 
for distinction, for eminence or fame; so that it ('ambition') has 
been recognized since most ancient times as a prime cause of com- 
petition; but since in most people it is not satisfied with grudging 
or perfunctory approval, it becomes one of the strongest checks on 
heedless egotism. We have already discussed this phase of custom 
as far as we are able. It is in this direction that we look for theory 
as to the plane of competition, and as to what stunts our so-called 
self-interest may be trained to do. The transformation of (ulti- 
mate) wants is also of the greatest importance here, since the 
further they can be harmonized, the less sharp will be competi- 
tion. The primitive customs at which we have guessed are the 
great-ancestors of our present legal and moral restraints; they are 

^ Essays in Social Justice, especially p. io6. 



PSYCHOLOGY OF THE VALUATION PROCESS 253 

the beginnings of that evolution in the forms of conflict which is 
the riddle of social philosophy.^ 

Adjustment of Present Action to Future Wants 

In summary, valuation is intelligent behavior; it is the adjust- 
ment of our present action to our future wants. We acquire skill 
and accuracy in it just as we do in other adaptive and future- 
referring acts. We employ habits unquestioningly so long as no 
obstruction or ambiguity arises, and it is only in a doubtful situa- 
tion that the act of valuation, as of reasoning in general, occurs. 
We save labor and trouble by borrowing other people's habits, 
which originated by some kind of reasoning; and by this cumula- 
tive growth of knowledge (adaptive behavior-tricks) we have 
achieved increasingly complex, roundabout means of satisfying 
our wants, — incidentally developing new wants faster than we 
could satisfy the old. As in all reasoning, there are all shades of 
error in our valuations, many of which are as serious as that of the 
squirrel who hoards nuts that are worm-eaten. The cause is the 
same in both cases, — the responses are not adjusted to all the 
* relevant ' facts of the situation. 

1 Among the manifold attacks on this riddle there is a popular one by Franz 
Oppenheimer, who sees in the State the survival of the "political means" to wealth 
(violent spoliation), as opposed to the equally ancient "economic means " .(volun- 
tary exchange). (The State; Eng. trans., 1908.) He appears to think this distinc- 
tion is known to every human mind, and that the primitive (or even modern) man 
has a moral consciousness, when he despoils a member of an alien tribe, which is 
quite different from that in which he slays wild animals and plunders their stores. 
In our view the two cases are originally accepted in the same matter-of-course way. 
Direct, and if necessary forcible, appropriation is doubtless the most ancient method 
of satisfying wants; the "economic means" evolves through long ages; and to 
identify hastily "political means" with violence is to beg a presumption that all 
governments are ' exploiters.' 



CHAPTER XVIII 

PSYCHOLOGY IN SAVING 

The Social Advantage of Capital 

In Western Civilization, thrift has long been esteemed a virtue. 
Sombart, whose elaborate historical researches lend his words 
great weight, tells us that the ' middle-class virtues ' of frugality 
or careful attention to trifling savings, were born as late as the 
fourteenth century, in Florence. It is in the writings of Alberti 
and the memoirs of Leonardo da Vinci's grandfather, of this 
period, that he finds the beginnings of those wise saws on econ- 
omy which foimd fullest expression in Benjamin Franklin.^ Pre- 
vious to that time, he says, there had been only the seigniorial 
fashion of profusion among people of means, and among peasants 
the enforced parsimony of want. While Sombart is doubtless 
right as to the Franklin type of propaganda, there is no doubt 
that thrift, in the sense of reasonable provision for future wants, 
has had a moral standing since prehistoric times. The older 
parts of the Bible and the Greek philosophers commend it or 
take it for granted, and the Christian precepts of "take no 
thought for the morrow" were avowedly revolutionary doctrines, 
justified by the imminence of the world's final catastrophe. 

We shall presently attempt some genetic explanation of the 
growth of such prudential sentiments, but first let us consider for 
a moment the technological aspects of saving. 

Up to the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century, the 
technical methods by which saving could be accomplished were 
much more restricted than is the case today. Thrift in all those 
preceding ages meant chiefly to husband your stores of grain and 
your domestic animals, or to hoard treasure and jewels, which 
could usually be exchanged for things you would want, so that 

^ The Quintessence of Capitalism (translation of Der Bourgeois), Ch. VII 
(original edition, 19 13). 

2S4 



PSYCHOLOGY IN SAVING 2$$ 

when flood, drouth, or pestilence might come, you would not be 
wholly without succor. Great fortunes were characteristically 
large flocks of animals or hoards of plate and precious stones. The 
thrift which the Paraguayan Indians of MiU's illustration had not 
learned, was merely restraint from slaughtering the work oxen for 
food. Adam Smith voices an almost pious horror at spendthrift 
ways, which doubtless springs from moral (and patriotic) tradi- 
tion over and above his perception of the technical role of capital. 
"The prodigal perverts" his patrimony when "he encroaches 
upon his capital. Like him who perverts the revenues of some 
pious foundation to profane purposes, he pays the wages of idle- 
ness with those funds which the frugaHty of his forefathers had, as 
it were, consecrated to the maintenance of industry." ^ Such 
profligacy diminishes the gross funds which can employ labor, 
hence restricts the population and wealth of the nation, — which 
is necessarily wrong. 

Now, although Smith, Mill, Say, and the classical economists 
generally, carried on further tirades on the advantage of saving 
over consuming luxuriously in that the former use gives more 
employment to labor and so in the long run raises wages, it was 
Bohm-Bawerk who put most clearly into relief the technological 
advantage of capital. Capital, said he, is merely tools, which are 
produced by labor from natural resources (' land ')• Further 
labor, using the tools, can produce more consumable goods than 
the total labor (including that which made the tools) can produce 
in the same number of working days, working with less elaborate 
equipment. More firewood, or corn, for example, can be pro- 
duced by a given number of labor days, if axes or plows are made 
first, than if all the labor is done with unaided hands. There is also 
a ' biological productivity ' of certain forms of capital. Seed, 
when planted, renews itself a hundredfold; and a herd of cattle 
on the plains grows by spontaneous propagation if their owners 
leave them to breed. The more capital saved, then, subject to 
technical limits which invention is always pushing into the dis- 
tance, the less is the labor required to produce consumable 
goods. 

1 Wealth of Nations, Bk. II, ch. iii. 



256 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

The course of invention, to be sure, is by nature unpredictable, 
but in general tools grow more complex and require ever more 
labor to build whilst successively they reduce the aggregate labor 
cost of commodities. The discoveries of the last century and a 
half have given us processes so immensely productive that popula- 
tion (in the Western world) has increased unprecedentedly along 
with (apparently) some general rise in the level of comfort. 
Everyone hopes that mechanical progress will soon eliminate 
poverty as we know it today, though many reformers fail to see 
the conditions of saving necessary to their dream. They revile 
the ' capfitalist ' and ridicule the economist for his concern over 
accumulation, but one and all they talk of the wonders which will 
be accomplished by automatic machinery. Since by general con- 
sent, therefore, tools are useful in production, we shall now take 
the technological aspects of capital for granted, and inquire into 
its psychological phases. 

Evolution of Providence 

In the first place we have the fact that interest is paid and has 
long been paid for the loan of capital. Even granted that ' ex- 
phcit ' interest taking was for some time restrained by Canon Law 
or otherwise, ' implicit ' interest persisted all the while in all 
prices of producers' goods. How is this ' institution ' maintained 
on the grand scale we know? Technological or biological pro- 
ductivity of capital alone does not explain the matter, for as 
Bohm-Bawerk made clear (and then forgot), physical produc- 
tivity is not necessarily value productivity. The potential advan- 
tages of a piece of capital might be counted in full into its present 
price, so that any orchard, for example, would exchange for as 
many apples as it would ever produce. Such would be the case if 
people in general wanted consumers' goods, available only in the 
future, with the same intensity as they want the same kind of 
goods available for immediate consumption. The Marxian theory 
that interest is due only to forcible exploitation has some place in 
the whole story, but sufiicient cases of interest-giving and taking 
on a free contractual basis are easily found to make this explana- 
tion inadequate. A number of writers, especially Bohm-Bawerk 



PSYCHOLOGY IN SAVING 257 

and Fisher, have shown in detail that contractual, explicit interest 
is only a small part of the real phenomenon of interest; that im- 
plicit interest lurks in practically every price, — not merely in 
the values of houses or farms. It would be impossible to stamp 
out all interest-taking by law, so long as any free buying and sell- 
ing remained. The pivot of interest theory, therefore, is in ' time- 
preference,' or people's ' impatience ' — we use Fisher's well- 
known terms — to get enjoyable goods. This impatience causes 
them, on the average, to sell their future birthrights for present 
messes of pottage to the extent of some five or ten per cent. 

Taking for granted, now, the general argument of Fisher in his 
admirable The Rate of Interest, we shall consider the contacts of 
our psychological data with the economist's principle of time 
preference. Unhappily psychologists have less to offer us on this 
than on any of our other problems, — that is, they have done less 
work that touches on it. 

It is prudence, however, rather than improvidence, that is hard 
to account for. The lower animals have (and presumably our 
prehuman ancestors had) as Aristotle said, no sense of time; they 
live in the present and make no responses to future wants. But 
men. The Philosopher went on, have memory and imagination 
(more of these than the brutes, anyway), and so they act with 
reference to a long-run satisfaction. 

But how can ' future wants,' physiologically, act on us in the 
present? If we act at all, is it not because of a present want? A 
future want, by definition, will not exist for some months or 
years. 

Of course the actual future wants are not operative now, and 
for that reason we often sadly miscalculate what they will be. 
But what we do is to learn to respond to conditions in distant times 
and places, through signs or ' shadows cast before,' which are 
immediately present to our senses. It is purely a case of learning, 
save to the extent that instinct makes us unwittingly provide for 
the future as a squirrel hoards nuts, — and such cases in hvmian 
afifairs are negligible. When the mouse learns to avoid the white 
doorway which harbors an electric shock, we might say that he 
is moved by a future want to get away from the pain, — he re- 



258 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

spends to the white arch, which is the sign of a more distant situa- 
tion. On only a little more complex scale, the small boy avoids 
the green apples which have previously given him stomach ache. 
Both these sorts of behavior are clearly provident, and both are 
clearly based on experience and imaginal revival of it. The be- 
havior may become stabilized into habit, and the images fade 
away (such is usually the case with adults and green apples) ; but 
it is still implicitly provident. As far as we know, any case of 
economic providence will be resolved into the elements of these 
absurd illustrations, — instinctive likes and dislikes, and learning 
as to means to satisfy these wants on conditioned reflex principles. 
The ' future want,' whether it be provision against pain, hunger, 
the disgrace of poverty, or the positive satisfactions of eating, 
fame, or the welfare of offspring, is effective only when its ele- 
ments have been experienced by the agent in a context toward 
which he learns to react as to the ' cause ' of that desired and 
known experience. 

The view has been fathered by Professor John Dewey, it is 
true, that human beings react strongly toward the merely un- 
known, toward discovery, toward "creative experience."^ No 
doubt most people would recognize such a consciousness; but the 
stimuli involved are without doubt definite present objects. If 
you are considering an airplane ride, these stimuli include the man 
who is offering to take you, and a mass of images of past deHghtful 
experiences in swings, automobiles, and other * adventures.' To 
say that such a prospective airplane passenger is moved by ' the 
unknown ' is Uke saying that the small boy is responding to a 
stomach ache he will not have, — a portentous metaphysical 
puzzle! It is simply one of the innumerable confusions arising 
from subjective psychologizing. 

Time-Evaluation 

How shall we conceive, now, of the struggle within the breast, 
between the impulse to present enjoyment and the desire for 
future benefit? Our discussions of reasoning and of valuation have 

1 See " The Phases of the Economic Interest," by H. W. Stuart, in the volume 
called Creative Intelligence, by Dewey and others (19 17). 



PSYCHOLOGY IN SAVING 259 

indicated the way. It is indeed a case of valuation, or of compari- 
son between two utilities. Economists know that the present 
enjoyment will generally prevail over the same kind and amount 
of enjoyment available only in the future. The 'present want ' is 
one system of reflexes, including the numerous responses which 
make up ' it is to be right now,' — not least among these are the 
aroused consummatory reactions, such as the flow of saliva. The 
other system of responses, which refers to a more distant con- 
summation, is perhaps composed of a wider range of imaginal 
elements, and these must be extensive and well-established to 
overcome the force of the incipient consummatory reactions in the 
' present want.' It would be premature to attempt to analyze any 
given instance further now, since the one point on which psy- 
chologists would reach most complete agreement is that each of 
these want- and desire-units, which economists handle so freely, is 
for psychological analysis a vast constellation of reactions which 
nearly defies understanding. But we have perhaps shown that a 
much fuller imderstanding of the process of time-evaluation is to 
be hoped for from psychological research. 

One thing is fairly certain, both to psychology and to common 
sense : there is a steady growth of providence parallel to and per- 
haps identical with, the growth of knowledge. No one can provide 
for a future want until he learns what action in the present will so 
provide, and this knowledge has been steadily developing through 
the ages. It is often said that most people learn only by their own 
bitter experience; they will not take the word of some one else. 
Our small boy, to be sure, usually insists on personal acquaintance 
with green apples, but as he grows older he becomes more teach- 
able, and when he sees an electric station marked "Danger — 
10,000 volts," he does not seek empirical confirmation of the 
warning. 

This is not to say that all human species, or all members of any 
species, can be taught providence. The range of general learning 
capacity, as we have had occasion to insist, varies considerably in 
both cases, and there are moreover differences in original strength 
among the impulses, so that one man finds it most difficult to 
avoid intoxication, while another's vice is overeating, and yet 



26o ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

another is unusually solicitous about his children, etc. Much of 
these apparent differences, however, may doubtless be ascribed to 
the circumstances of their rearing. Biicher's picture of primitive 
man as almost wholly improvident, living entirely from hand to 
mouth,^ is therefore perfectly plausible, but we must distinguish 
sharply between those branches of mankind who somehow be- 
come possessed of an inheritable large learning capacity, and 
those, nearer the brutes in intelligence, who can never get beyond 
a certain stage in intelligent provision and hence are still with us 
as ' primitive men.' A host of special problems are here sug- 
gested, on which further data must be sought. 

The Marginal Saver, and the Equilibrium or Func- 
tional Theory of Interest 

It is now recognized by virtually all theorists on interest that 
some saving would go on even if no interest whatever were paid, 
— in fact, that some accumulation would take place in the face of 
negative interest. That is, many of us are so provident that we 
should be willing, if necessary, to pay for facihties for ' storing ' 
our savings until that time in the future when we should need 
them more than we do now. Possibly some of this ' automatic ' 
saving is quasi-instinctive, like the dog's or the squirrel's hoard- 
ing. Most of it, however, is due to the habits dependent on our 
special environment, — accumulations of knowledge, of technical 
arts making saving easy, and of precepts and examples exhorting 
thrift. * Rainy-day ' saving in some degree is practised by nearly 
all. The parental instincts furnish a natural drive toward accu- 
mulation, which is reinforced by customs calling such provision 
for the children praiseworthy.^ Force of habit keeps many people 
accumulating when other motives have become well-nigh obso- 
lete, and the desire to make oneself conspicuous for his large 
hoard (which is at bottom the same motive as the miser's who 
simulates poverty to the world) is of course a great force toward 
the heaping up of possessions. 

^ Industrial Evolution, Ch. I. 

2 Cf . Marshall, Principles, Bk. IV, ch. vi, sees. 5,6: — " Family affection is the 
main motive of saving." 



PSYCHOLOGY IN SAVING 261 

It is sometimes loosely said, moreover, that the very rich are 
physically unable to consume their vast wealth, and so they 
* save ' in spite of themselves.^ The present writer considers this 
proposition doubtful, except to the following extent: On the 
principle of diminishing utility, it is less sacrifice for the man with 
a thousand doUars either to lose or to refrain from consuming one 
dollar than for the man who has only one hxmdred dollars all told. 
But is it easier for the one to spare any given fraction of his stock 
than for the other to spare the same fraction? The affirmative 
does not follow from diminishing utiHty. At any rate, even sup- 
posing that the man with a thousand dollars will, on the average, 
be willing to save ten dollars for a lower percentage premium than 
that for which the man with a hundred will save one, we are still 
not sure that the former's fortune ever could become so large that 
he would have no reluctance whatever to save any part of it. Cut 
off his interest and he may still save, yes, but so may people of 
any grade of fortune, from the motives we have reckoned with in 
the preceding paragraph. 

But, the usual analysis goes on (say by Carver, who was a 
pioneer on this point ^), such automatic saving does not supply as 
much capital as society demands. The scale of demand offers are 
based considerably on the ' productivity ' of capital, — the ad- 
vantage in total labor days from using tools. As more can be 
used with profit than will be forthcoming without interest, a part 
of this advantage from the use of capital has to be paid as interest 
to the ' marginal saver ' to overcome his preference for present 
enjoyment of his wealth. Thus the theory of interest is made part 
of the theory of value, with demand and supply in equilibrium. 
Demand varies with the diminishing usefulness of added install- 
ments of capital, in any given state of the arts; and the resistance 
to saving increases as more installments are withheld out of a 
given income.^ It is presumed that the reader is familiar with this 

^ Cf. Hobson, Work and Wealth, pp. 98, 99; though the above does not quite 
state his position. 

2 See his " Place of Abstinence in the Theory of Interest," Quar. Jour. Econ., 8: 
40-61 (1893). 

^ The marginal saver, of course, does not refer to any particular set of persons, 
but to the final increment in every saver's accumvdation. 



262 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

analysis, as found in Carver, Marshall, Taussig, Fetter and others, 
• — essentially it is in Bohm-Bawerk and Fisher. Fisher develops a 
useful concept of individual income streams in time, which have 
much to do with any individual's rate of time preference, and he 
shows ingeniously that the less ' impatient ' persons keep lending 
to the more impatient until the income streams of each have been 
altered so as to bring the rates of both to the market equilibrium.^ 

Fisher protests against the so-called productivity of capital as 
part of interest theory, but he does not entirely do without it. 
The rising income stream of the entrepreneur is dependent partly 
upon the technical productivity of the capital he borrows. In- 
terest would exist, no doubt, if there were only consumption 
loans, but the scale of lending and the rate of interest would im- 
doubtedly be different from what we now know. 

In our judgment the effect of the Great War on interest rates 
tends to confirm the equiUbrium theory just mentioned. The net 
effect up to the present (1920) has been an extraordinary increase 
in the interest rate (on equivalent security) — say from four or 
five to seven or eight per cent — much more than the usual in- 
crease in other periods of rising prices. There was inconceivable 
destruction of capital in the war, including a great deterioration of 
transportation facilities. New capital, therefore, can be applied 
to uses more important and ' productive ' than is usual in normal 
times; new engines and cars, for example, make a much greater 
difference in ultimate production than normally, — their uses, 
that is, are considerably above the usual margin of indifference. 
As to the supply side, everyone had been saving to his limit to 
supply munitions and food for the destruction of war, and so the 
further saving necessary to supply rail or any other equipment is 
made more reluctantly than is the case with the smaller amounts 
required in normal times. Popularly and inexactly we might say 
"the demand for capital has outrun the supply." 

Marginal Saving Shown Only in Mass Action 

As in the marginal theory of value generally, we should be care- 
ful not to speak as though every saver made refined calculations 

1 The Rate of Interest (1907), especially Chs. VII, VIII. 



PSYCHOLOGY IN SAVING 263 

statable in mathematical formulae. Introspective evidence alone 
would brand the marginal saver as a myth. Probably very few 
persons could say accurately whether they save more when the 
market rate of interest goes up. Most of us would say we save 
what we can in any case, and it is a matter of luck what interest 
we get. In this case again it is evidence of the behavior of large 
masses, with ' other things equal ' in a series of experiments, that 
alone will give us laws. It is certain, as has been pointed out, that 
there is much intramarginal saving, and the theorists also com- 
monly point out that some people have a certain (' unearned ') 
income as a goal, and hence must save more rather than less when 
the interest rate goes down. Fisher's suggestion that every pur- 
chaser discounts the future uses of hats, overcoats and everything 
else, and other writers' illustrations of a traditional savage bor- 
rowing a canoe, occasion some mirth even among reputable 
economists. 

There is much less doubt that most people watch pretty closely 
for means of getting the largest possible return on whatever capital 
they do save; but this fact alone does not prove that there are any 
marginal savers. It is conceivable that the automatic forces de- 
termine the total amount saved, whilst the rate of interest (based, 
on this assumption, wholly on the duninishing productivity of 
capital) merely apportions the total stock to the most remunera- 
tive uses. Even if this be really the case, we may observe, the 
institution of interest performs a valuable social function by 
directing capital into the channels of greatest effectiveness. 

Taussig inclines toward the opposite hypothesis, namely, that 
there is a normal rate of time preference — about four to five per 
cent — and that the amount of capital supplied increases or 
diminishes rapidly in response to slight variations in the interest 
rate, which are due to oscillations in the productivity-demand 
curve,^ and soon settles to its normal price. Interest is here con- 
ceived to be a case of value under constant cost. He points out 
that the interest rate (exempHfied by the French government's 
rentes) has remained within a few points of this four-or-five per 
cent level for several centuries, although the world's stock of 
1 Principles, Ch. XXXIX, sec. 5. 



264 ■ ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

capital, even in proportion to population, has increased with 
inventions some thousand-fold. 

The oscillations in explicit interest rates would probably have 
been more extreme, however, if in the modern period capitalists 
and entrepreneurs had been usually separate. The fact seems to 
be that our great accumulations have been made as profits, and 
retained as surpluses in the businesses in the hope of earning 
further great profits.^ This is in many respects like lending at high 
interest, and helps to account for the difficulty of attracting capi- 
tal to pubfic utiUties when they have been limited to a ' reason- 
able return ' on their bona fide investment. 

But when all is said, there is no more reason for doubting the 
existence of the marginal saver than there is for rejecting the 
marginal buyer. Both are abstractions, as the * average man ' 
always is. They represent simply a mathematical expression of 
the * average ' man's reaction toward infinitesimal changes in 
prices; and when mass statistics are available they show a regular- 
ity of action which make them susceptible of such mathematical 
analysis. In like manner the average effect of vaccination does not 
show up in any one case, but the calculation of such an average is 
an indispensable step toward the control of smallpox. An average 
quantity or measurement even in physics may not coincide with 
any actual observation, yet such averages form the basis of all our 
modern technology. The sufficient vindication of the marginal 
saver is the expansion or contraction of aggregate saving in any 
social group with the rise or fall of interest, — other things being 
equal. Good tests of the theory, with other things equal, must 
necessarily be rare. The fact that Government, or any individual, 
can borrow more at six per cent than it can at five per cent might 
mean only that it attracts capital away from other borrowers who 
are unable to pay as much. But the difiiculties of making good 
tests should not be insuperable. 

Reducing the Cost of Saving 

From the concepts of automatic saving and the marginal saver 
there follows the concept of saver's rent or surplus, analogous to 
^ Cf. V. S. Clark, History of Manufactures in the United States. 



PSYCHOLOGY IN SAVING 265 

consumer's surplus. One price (with some practical limitations) 
rules in the market, and those who would have saved for less than 
this price get a payment that would not have been necessary to 
evoke their own service. This part of the total price, which is 
sometimes called "unproductive surplus" paid by the modern 
industrial system, is becoming a focal point of the attacks of 
modern social reform theorists such as Hobson. The idle rich, 
supported by interest without doing a stroke of work, are marked 
for extinction by these as by older sociaHstic theorists, but unlike 
the latter, these modern critics recognize that a part of our exist- 
ing capital stock would not be saved unless interest were paid. 
Not all interest per se, therefore, but the * surplus ' element in 
interest, is the object of their attack. The problem is to cut off 
this hidden element, and still leave motives adequate to supply 
the necessary amount of capital. 

Naturally the first suggestion is to transfer it to the whole com- 
munity by taxation, along with the pure rent of land, which is 
likewise considered an ' unproductive surplus ' when paid over to 
private landlords. Ground rent might, but for administrative 
difficulties and questions of justice toward the owners, be taxed 
away completely without any prospect of the supply of land being 
diminished, but the rent element in interest is even harder to 
point out or to reach. Something along the line of this program is 
realized, probably, in progressive taxes on ' unearned ' incomes 
(both rent and interest) , for it is the saving of the larger owners, 
who are therefore receivers of the larger interest incomes, which is 
particularly pointed out as * automatic ' saving. Of course the 
rainy-day saving of the poor is also carried on very largely without 
regard to the rate of interest, and interest paid on it is unproduc- 
tive surplus too, from this point of view, but it is not suggested 
that this income be confiscated by the state while the middle-class 
person who demands interest as a condition of saving, is allowed 
his bribe. The project of striking ofif ' improductive ' incomes 
clearly is difficult of execution and is of uncertain justice. 

More drastic is the sociaUst proposal of making the state the 
exclusive capitahst, and forcing everybody to work. Everyone 
will then bear a proportionate share of the sacrifices of saving; no 



266 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

one will be allowed to live in idleness. This plan in the hands of 
either a benevolent despot or a society of wise men might indeed 
carry on the requisite accumulation without the malpractices of 
individualist capitalism; but the slight evidence as to its feasi- 
biHty, with human nature as it is, supplied by the communal enter- 
prises of modern cities and states, rather tells against it. When a 
public work requiring considerable capital is decided upon, such 
as a school, water plant or bridge, almost invariably private 
capitalists are called upon to supply the capital by purchasing the 
public authority's bonds. Considerable stocks of capital are in- 
deed acquired by states and municipalities, through unearned in- 
crements or the retiring of bonds before the property is worn out, 
but the amount of real saving done by citizens in corporate capac- 
ity is comparatively small. If private capitalists were extin- 
guished, of course the state affairs would assume new importance 
and we are quite unable to see what the long-run effect would be 
upon capital equipment. 

Inheritance 

The motives concerned in accumulation do not relate merely to 
a leisure-class income for the original saver. He saves in many 
cases for the conscious purpose of providing as large an endow- 
ment as possible for his heirs, and so economists appraise the 
institution of inheritance chiefly as to its influence on saving. It 
might be better for society and for individuals if inheritance were 
abolished, and the hereditary idlers thus cut off at a stroke, if we 
could take the supply of capital for granted. But though wealth 
may be a doubtful boon to the children, there is little doubt that 
many fathers are stimulated to save by the prospect of their 
children receiving the accumulation and becoming respectable 
leisure-class members. Abolish inheritance, and you go a long 
way toward equalizing opportunities throughout the rising gen- 
eration, as well as reducing the leisure-class evils to a minimum; 
but will men ever accumulate so much for the state as for their 
families? 

This is another problem which can be attacked only empir- 
ically; psychology can say Httle more than that it would expect, 



PSYCHOLOGY IN SAVING 267 

from the indications of our biological evolution, that labors for 
love of family will in general be more sustained than labors for 
love of the state. But in practice, inheritance taxes with a moder- 
ate exemption to provide for education of the heirs, appear not to 
discourage accumulation. We can at least favor the reduction of 
collateral inheritances (to distant relatives), since these appear to 
play little or no part in motivating saving. Inheritance of large 
fortunes is more on the defensive than ever before; egalitarian 
theory and the pressure on public financiers to find revenues com- 
bine to push progressive death duties higher and higher by both 
central and local governments. However extreme the movement 
may become, and however such taxes are squandered by the 
state for current expenditures, this movement seems to the 
writer to give more promise of curing the real evils of capitahsm 
than does any program for attacking interest-taking. 

Increasing Providence 

Assuming that the present institutions as to interest and in- 
heritance will continue for some time, however, do our psychologi- 
cal principles suggest any means of improving the conditions of 
accumulation? 

First, what has been said on influencing wants in general points 
to possibilities of inducing members of the leisure class to become 
more obviously useful. In some respects this course is preferable 
to any forcible means of ' putting everybody to work,' for un- 
earned income has often supported men engaged in work that be- 
came highly esteemed later but which at the time could not have 
been sold. We must recognize that a leisure class, established (as 
it was) by conquest, and containing (as it always has) a large pro- 
portion of unworthy members, has been nevertheless the source of 
most of our art, science and invention. If equahty had been 
maintained, we should probably still have an equahty of ig- 
norance and squalor. The few members of this leisure class to 
whom we owe so much of the good in our lives were not thought 
especially useful by the majority of their contemporaries, — they 
were considered ' idle ' by the masses because they were living in 
advance of their time. And so it may well be for some time in the 



268 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

future. But so long as the line between production and non-pro- 
duction is liberally drawn, no one need hesitate to try to cultivate 
ideals of usefulness in the leisure class. If their living were more 
frugal and their pursuits generally more acceptable to their 
poorer neighbors, the institution of interest would lose many of its 
enemies. 

A general increase in providence, moreover, would be equiva- 
lent to lowering the real cost of saving. It would increase total 
utility, because capital or ' labor-saving devices ' would roll up 
the faster. With lower interest, business men could afford to 
develop all manner of better mechanical equipment. It is in this 
connection that the disputes over human nature and the interest 
rate become important. Is there a quasi-instinctive time prefer- 
ence, as the nearly stationary rate in the past has suggested to 
Taussig? 

We believe not, and to that extent we sympathize with the 
historical or institutional economists' criticisms of expositions 
which impute refined calculations on present and future utilities 
to savages. Our own barely human ancestors, as well as other 
savages with less potentialities, were probably about as improvi- 
dent as lower animals. The human instincts take care of man 
fairly well in the present (in tropical regions) , but if his environ- 
ment temporarily fails him, he perishes. The growth of knowledge, 
which is our means of reacting with reference to distant times and 
places, is a slow and cumulative process, and a considerable store 
had to be embodied in tradition and custom before there was any 
such thing as ' value of future goods.' Then, the need of provi- 
sion was but dimly realized, and a considerable premium placed 
on the present. A high rate of interest — for ages implicit, but 
finally recognized as * usury ' — was necessary to even the bal- 
ance between the urgent call of the present and the fainter sum- 
mons of the future. We therefore look upon providence as a 
growing thing and time preference as variable with time, place 
and geography, but tending to diminish in any people whose na- 
tive learning capacity is high. Risk, however, will become more 
of a deterrent as it is better recognized, and hence that element in 
gross interest may increase except as far as the actual hazards 
which risks stand for are reduced by collective action. 



PSYCHOLOGY IN SAVING 269 

The impulsiveness of certain individual wants seems to make 
for persistence of impatience. The so-called lower wants, of 
hunger and of escape from pain, are the most impulsive, how- 
ever; and these recede to the background as the general level of 
comfort rises with increased production relative to population. 
The further we get out of a pain economy, the easier it is to get 
still further ahead. There may also be a slow drift by natural 
selection toward survival of those people who are least impulsive, 
and have the largest native capacity for prudence. In modern 
times, to be sure, the imprudent as to reproduction have left the 
more numerous progeny, but other customs may sometime make 
this result less usual; and anyway, in the competition among 
societies, it is the European type rather than the improvident 
savage which survives. 

Not merely growth of knowledge, but positive propaganda, is 
likely to raise the general level of providence. The arts of the 
advertiser are being brought to aid the long-standing appeals of 
the preacher, to ' sell ' the habits of thrift; whilst instruments to- 
ward their practice, such as dime banks, building and loan asso- 
ciations, insurance companies, are being placed all about us. 
Much of this propaganda is motived by mercenary considerations, 
it is true, and many of the appeals are fallacious; but persuasion 
probably has a great role to play in lowering the interest rate by 
reducing the psychic resistance to saving.^ 

^ The writer recently saw an advertisement of a bond house which dwelt on the 
increase of " pleasures " which investments would mean. It struck him as less effec- 
tive than the types which appeal in the name of a future * career ' or better provi- 
sion for dependents. 



CHAPTER XIX 

WORK 

Desire for Wealth as a Motive in Work 

If men were not offered incentives to work, in the shape of bribes 
or threats, what would they do? Many of us are inclined to say, 
"Man is naturally indolent. If he is not stimulated to work he 
will remain idle, doing nothing at all." But that is a crude view. 
' Idleness ' always consists in doing something, if it be only draw- 
ing breath; and we frequently make jokes about the strenuous 
efforts which some loafers will make to avoid doing ' work.' Play, 
of course, often involves heart-breaking exertions. The distinc- 
tion between work, therefore, and play or idleness, is like the 
farmer's discrimination of ' weeds ' from ' plants,' it turns on the 
economic value of the results. Work or labor is the activity, not 
necessarily irksome, which results in goods that are scarce and 
command a price. 

Biicher has pointed out that among the most primitive peoples, 
work, in the sense of industrial activities, seems to have originated 
in those spontaneous activities not related to the lower wants, 
which we would at first sight term esthetic or playful. 

In all probability there are instincts similar to those that are found among 
the more intelligent of the lower animals, that impel man to extend his ac- 
tivities beyond the mere search for food, especially the instinct for imitating 
and for experimenting. . . . The taming of domestic animals, for example, 
begins not with the useful animals, but with such species as man keeps merely 
for amusement or the worship of gods. Industrial activity seems everywhere 
to start with the painting of the body, tattooing, piercing or otherwise dis- 
figuring separate parts of the body, and gradually to advance to the produc- 
tion of ornaments, masks, drawing on bark, petrograms, and similar play- 
products. In these things there is everywhere displayed a peculiar tendency 
to imitate the animals which the savage meets with in his immediate sur- 
roundings, and which he looks upon as his equals. . . . Even when the ad- 
vance is made to the construction of objects of daily use (pots, stools, etc.) 
the animal figure is retained with remarkable regularity ; . . . and lastly, in 
the dances of primitive peoples, the imitation of the motions and the cries of 



WORK 271 

animals play the principal part. . . . All regularly sustained activity 
finally takes on a rhythmic form and becomes fused with music and song in 
an indivisible whole. ^ 

Although the Scriptural conception of work as a curse, involv- 
ing unpleasant sweating of brows, is validated by much of daily- 
experience, modern economists are giving increasing attention to 
the more pleasurable kinds of work. In part this shift of emphasis 
is doubtless due to the somewhat higher level of comfort which 
people of today enjoy, as compared with Scriptural times; in part 
it may be ascribed to the acumen of earHer generations of econ- 
omists who perceived that many of the ' privileged classes ' such 
as clergy, artists, governmental officials, are actually producers, 
as well as the man with the hoe; and that the earHer hours of 
almost anyone's labor are felt to be pleasant. But to the ' mar- 
ginal unit ' of labor, and to many units somewhat below the 
margin, there are psychic resistances to labor which must be over- 
come by positive motives, and we shall now attempt some use of 
our psychology in analyzing both the positive and negative forces 
concerned in work. 

The most obvious, and by far the most important, motive to 
labor in modern societies is the want for wealth, which is desired 
as a means toward getting goods which satisfy the individual's 
final wants. In the savage state, man, like the brutes under our 
own eyes, was impelled by his immediate wants to make direct 
operations on nature, such as gathering nuts, carcasses, fruits, — 
in short, to carry on the Crusoe-berry-picking of economic lore. 
Economic historians call this earliest stage of economy ' collec- 
tional economy,' ' direct appropriation,' or ' grubbing, hunting 
and fishing,' and they point out that the stages of culture — an- 
imal culture or agriculture — were possible only after a vast 
development in knowledge and discipline. 

Presently human groups acquired by various steps the tricks 
or habits of division of labor and of peaceful bargain and sale (in 
many cases division of labor was by customary communism within 
a tribe, without individual sales), and the generations born into 
this more advanced culture learned from their fathers these artifi- 

1 Industrial Evolution, pp. 27, 28. 



272 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

cial chains of causation between efforts and satisfactions. Within 
the limits of his nature and nurture, each newcomer adopts that 
occupation which promises to give him the largest possible want- 
fulfillment, by a series of exchanges, for his effort. The limitations 
on the knowledge and opportunities of every human being are so 
great that no one, probably, finds really the most elS&cient way to 
satisfy his wants, but we all choose the best according to our 
lights. 

Since all people (disregarding the more or less feeble-minded) 
are in some degree intelligent in perceiving what they have to do 
to satisfy their wants, and since most of their wants are to be 
satisfied by purchase through wealth, a system of ' payment 
according to the individual's output ' is always a reliable way of 
inducing men to work. Horses, dogs, rats, to the extent of their 
learning capacity, also ' labor ' for the rewards they have learned 
to associate with certain acts of their own. The more intelligent 
any creature is, and the more wants he has, the more certainly can 
he be counted upon to respond to true causal connections between 
rewards or punishments and work. The more stupid or easily 
satisfied he is, the more immediate must the stimulus of food or 
hunger or whip be to arouse him to exertion. Systems both of 
slavery and communism find it worth while to provide at least 
some privations or extra doles of food and other comforts, if they 
are to get the most work done by their laborers. 

There are many facts which are occasionally brought forward 
by our economic heretics to contradict this principle, but the con- 
tradictions will not stand criticism. For example, men in industry 
today frequently loaf on the job, — but mostly when they have 
found that it can be done without diminution of their pay. When 
a * scientific management ' system is installed which apportions 
rewards accurately to the individual's output, the workers re- 
spond with increased production, unless other motives (mostly 
prudential ones also) are at the same time aroused by other fac- 
tors in the situation. The trade union objections to the system, 
in other words, are based much more largely upon the individual- 
istic fear of wages per unit of product being cut than upon the 
moral precept that all ought to get the same daily wage. 



WORK 273 

Again, suddenly increased wage rates sometimes result in 
diminished production because the workers can buy their cus- 
tomary commodities for fewer days' work, and prefer for the time 
being to take holidays in the country rather than earn more 
money by working full time. But give them a year or two, or in- 
crease their pay more gradually, and the proposition that wants 
for purchasable goods increase faster than the individual's money 
income will apply to them also. 

A third apparent contradiction is raised by the case of some 
professional and business men and state officials, who are said to 
do their best work regardless of the amount of their pay.^ We 
shall presently try to analyze further the truth contained in this 
statement, but here let us point to its obvious limitations. Are 
there no grades of pay in any of these services? If one post pays 
more than another, is it purely a matter of luck who gets the 
better paying posts? The observation of most of us is that busi- 
ness executives, professional men, and governmental servants 
usually get promoted in salary only when they become ' worth ' 
more; their pay, as well as that of the humbler laborer, depends 
on their output, and this fact stimulates them to do their best. Of 
course the product of a judge or of a professor is less tangible than 
that of a coal-hewer, and so there is more chance for misjudgment 
by those who determine the salaries of the ' higher ' ranks. When- 
ever, due to some lack of connection between results and pay- 
ment, a sinecure exists, the general judgment is that the holder is 
not apt to be industrious in his ostensible occupation. He may 
have better things to do. 

Since practically all men are so nearly dominated by the wealth- 
getting motive in their attitude toward work — and this because 
so large a proportion of the goods they want, whether for sub- 
sistence, play or love, may be had only for pay — economic rea- 
soning based upon this motive alone has been highly serviceable 
in the statesman's or industrialist's dealings with actual economic 
life. J. S. Mill, in his earlier years, conceived of economic science 
as an abstraction, not to be considered true of the real man, just as 
Bagehot did: 

1 See for example, Hobson, Work and Wealth, Ch. XIII. 



274 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

It (political economy) does not treat of the whole of man's nature as 
modified by the social state nor of the whole conduct of man in society. It 
is concerned with him solely as a being who desires to possess wealth, and 
who is capable of judging of the comparative efficacy of means for obtaining 
that end. It predicts only such of the phenomena of the social state as take 
place in consequence of the pursuit of wealth. It makes entire abstraction of 
every other human passion or motive except those which may be regarded as 
perpetually antagonizing principles to the desire of wealth, namely, aversion 
to labour, and desire of the present enjoyment of costly indulgences. These 
it takes, to a certain extent, into its calculations because those do not merely, 
like other desires, occasionally conflict with the pursviit of wealth, but ac- 
company it always as a drag, or impediment and are therefore inseparably 
mixed up in the consideration of it.^ 

Jevons too, who based his economic reasoning avowedly on the 
strictest hedonistic premises taken from Bentham, did not sup- 
pose wealth or even fame to be the sole motives in work. Ex- 
claiming his admiration of the neglected researches of Cournot 
and Gossen, he said: 

The history of these forgotten works is, indeed, a strange and discouraging 
one; but the day must come when the eyes of those who cannot see will be 
opened. Then will due honor be given to all who like Cournot and Gossen 
have laboured in a thankless field of human knowledge, and have met with 
the neglect or ridicule they might well have expected. Not indeed that such 
men do really work for honour; they bring forth a theory as the tree brings 
forth its fruit.2 

Unmercenary or Non-Financial Motives 

Any science must always be in some degree an abstraction, but 
its development consists in filling in more and more subsidiary 
laws which bring it ever closer to reahty. A number of econ- 
omists in recent years have been delving beyond the wealth 
motive in work (as well as beyond ' aversion to labor '), and are 
trying to discover something predictable about these unmer- 
cenary or non-financial forces (as we might call them, for want 
of a better term) ; and business men through personnel managers 
are actively seeking and finding incentives to work which are not 
of the nature of economic goods. The application of this branch 
of economics to the problem of communism or sociahsm is ob- 

^ Essays on Some Unsettled Questions, pp. 137, 138 (written 1829 or 1830). 
2 Theory of Political Economy, Preface to 2d edition, 1879. Page xxxviii of 4th 
edition. 



WORK 275 

vious, since such systems propose to dispense entirely with the 
wealth-motive in work. 

Let it be noticed, however, that such a formula as ' psychic in- 
come ' hardly more than states the problem. Fetter says: 

It may be seen that (anticipated) total psychic income is what motivates 
our economic activity, — at least as far as this activity is determined by con- 
scious purpose. There are men holding public ofi&ce to whom the salary re- 
ceived is an insignificant consideration. They are paid largely in public 
esteem, or in their own consciousness of duty well performed. . . . Man's 
psychic life is the thing which is of ultimate concern to him, etc' 

Similarly Hume stated "Everything in the world is purchased by 
labour ; and our passions are the only causes of labour." ^ (Hume's 
"passions" are roughly equivalent to what we call instincts.) 
True so far as they go, but they get us no further than "We do 
only what we want to do, and we want not merely money." Fet- 
ter's remarks on public esteem and conscience offer some clue, but 
' psychic income ' is simply what other economists call ' utility.' 
A splendid start toward understanding the unmercenary incen- 
tives was made by Adolf Wagner about 1879, ^ ^^^ classification 
of the "Leading Motives in Economic Actions." ^ Wagner was a 
keen and sympathetic critic of sociaHsm, and his discussion was 
obviously orientated by its problems. There are five leading eco- 
nomic motives, he said, in pairs of positive and negative, as 
follows: 

1. Desire for wealth (wirtschaftlichen Vorteil) and repugnance 
of distress for lack of it (Noth). 

2. Fear of punishment, and hope of approval (Anerkennung). 

3. Desire for praise (Geltimgsstreben, Ehrengefuhl), and fear 
of shame or being despised. 

4. Impulse to activity or joy in doing, and dislike of inac- 
tivity. 

5. The moral command, and fear of conscience. 

^ Economic Principles, p. 28. 

2 On Commerce, par. 12. 

' Grundlegung, Bk. I, pt. i, pp. 70-136 of 3d edition. "Die Wirtschaftliche 
Natur des Menschen." See brief condensation of this analysis in Quar. Jour. Econ., 
i: 117-129. 



2/6 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

Provision for family or other loved ones is assigned to the first 
class, and curiously, he thinks only No. 5 is not egoistic. His 
wresthngs with these riddles of hedonism and altruism, and his 
importations from the leading psychologists of his time (Wundt, 
Hoeffding, and others) are now of less interest than is the wide 
historical learning with which he attempts to trace the relative 
strength of these motives through ancient and modern times. 
Servile labor, depending on the physical punishment motive 
almost entirely, has been gradually replaced by hired labor be- 
cause the latter is more productive, — the wealth motive, ap- 
parently, is more usable. The crucial question to socialists is 
whether, in attempting to dispense with the wealth-drive, they 
can so develop lire motives of praise, of joy in activity and of con- 
science, that physical punishment will not be necessary on a con- 
siderable scale. If not, their indictment of liberalism as ' freedom 
to starve ' will be but a sorry consolation for the rigors of their 
conscripted labor. On the possibilities of such development he 
was not sanguine. The large faith in human perfectibility, 
through proper education of the youth, which had inspired alike 
such early socialists as Owen and Fourier, and such extreme indi- 
vidualists as James Mill and Bentham, had waned with increasing 
recognition of hereditary egoistic instincts, and of the rather 
limited instinctive groundwork of the family affections. 

Theory of Creative Instincts 

Since Wagner there had been no important additions in this 
branch of theory — in fact, few economists took notice of it — 
until the recent vogue of the * creative instinct ' doctrine. This 
supposed instinct has been thought by many writers of some 
standing to promise a radical reform of our ideas on work and to 
point the way toward a great reduction in industrial discontent, 
— perhaps even to give a solid scientific basis to socialism. We 
have discussed the psychological standing of this * instinct of 
workmanship ' and its equivalents pretty fully in Chapter X, but 
some further examination of it, from the standpoint of work, is 
called for by the importance of the issues. 



WORK 277 

It will be remembered that William James sponsored an in- 
stinct of constructiveness, along with a great array of others, in 
1890, and that Veblen started to write about the instinct of work- 
manship in 1898.^ When Veblen expanded his theory into a book 
in 19 13, his psychological authorities (as distinguished from an- 
thropological data) boil down to James and McDougall, the lat- 
ter being greatly indebted to the former. Citation is made to 
Loeb's Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative 
Psychology (published 1900), but Loeb's utterances on the in- 
stinct of workmanship appear to have been based upon Veblen's 
earlier article. We should not overlook that supposed entity, 
' invention,' which was the Tarde's twin of ' imitation,' nor 
Bergson's ' creative evolution,' nor John Dewey's ' creative intel- 
ligence.' All these doctrines, but especially the argument used by 
James, from bee and beaver analogies, have contributed to the 
hypothesis of a generahzed human creative or workmanlike in- 
stinct, which underlies the recent social-economic writings of 
Veblen, Hobson, Taussig, Fisher, Parker, Marot, Bertrand Rus- 
sell,^ not to mention numerous lesser lights. 

The behavior attributed to the ' creative impulse ' varies 
somewhat with different writers, so that it is scarcely possible to 
deal with all of them in the same breath. In Veblen, it is a war 
against waste, a passion for doing whatever the other instincts 
want done, in the most efficient possible manner. With Taussig 
it is simply invention of a new as well as a more efficient way of 
doing whatever is to be done. Marot and Hobson emphasize the 
human craving for novelty, which is supposed to be ' creative- 
ness.' But all agree that the impulse makes at least some kinds of 
work intrinsically attractive to most men if not to all, that it 
takes no thought of the morrow, and causes its possessors to do 
good work without regard to pay. The evidence for its existence, 

' " The Instinct of Workmanship and the Irksomeness of Labor," Am. Jour. 
Sociol., 4: 187-201. 

2 J. A. Hobson, Work and Wealth, Ch. IV, "The Creative Factor in Produc- 
tion"; Taussig, Inventors and Moneymakers; Irving Fisher, "Health and War," 
Am. Labor Leg. Rev., 8: 9-20 (1918); C. H. Parker, "Motives in Economic Life," 
Proceedings Am. Econ. Ass'n 1917; Helen Marot, The Creative Impulse in Indus- 
try (1918); B. Russell, Proposed Roads to Freedom (1919). 



278 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

apart from the few psychologists referred to, is from the testi- 
mony of certain persons as to how they ' feel ' toward their work, 
and from the objective behavior of some artists, martyrs, and 
other riders of hobbies. Our characterizations, however imfair 
they may be to any of the individual authors mentioned, serve to 
show some of the ambiguities which any one encounters who starts 
to talk about man's natural creativeness or workmanship. 

Let us now break up this propensity into the psychological 
elements at which we arrived in Part II, and then we may be able 
to answer better the natural question. Why shouldn't we use the 

* instinct of workmanship ' as a postulate in our theory of work, 
since so many people recognize it as a stable human trait? 

Prominent among the well-authenticated elements of this 
workmanlike behavior are the instinctive responses of manipula- 
tion, and of visual exploration directed toward moving or unex- 
plored objects. These two propensities go far to make up native 

* curiosity.' What we may call the appetite for exercise of all be- 
havior-mechanisms is important here too; it causes us to turn 
restlessly from one occupation to another as the mechanisms 
used become fatigued. This appetite, together with the curiosity 
responses mentioned, contribute to the joint result we call ' crav- 
ing for novelty,' or * adventure.' Then there are supposed to be 
individual aptitudes for special kinds of learning, as Woodworth 
has brought out, which incline our ' interests ' in different direc- 
tions almost from the first, — some toward any of the multitude 
of manual occupations, and some toward any of the variety of 
reading, reflecting and writing vocations. These aptitudes per- 
haps make up the innate basis of esthetic preferences. 

Finally, among the quasi-instinctive springs to workmanship, 
is the enormously important desire for the approval of one's fel- 
lows. William James' remark that nine-tenths of the world's 
work is done by emulation, comes easily to mind. The true artist 
or scholar or other workman does indeed serve an ideal, and he is 
more or less indifferent to what other people actually say of his 
work. But would he ever develop that ideal if he were reared in 
solitude, or if his society repressed all expressions of praise and 
blame? We cannot believe it; the imperceptible transition from 



WORK 279 

striving to be praised (in good part, we admit, due to the associa- 
tions with more tangible rewards and punishments which praises 
carry) in childhood, by successive steps to the desire for only 
discriminating praise, is too plain to be mistaken, when once we 
have learned that associative links are continually dropping out 
of consciousness. The long-standing bugaboo against associa- 
tionism, that various inner commands are innate because the sub- 
ject is not conscious of any connection between them and more 
primitive impulses, loses its potency when one realizes that all 
manner of associative connections are forgotten in the same way. 
Who can tell just what experiences taught him to be afraid of the 
dark? Or why he Ukes or dislikes people at first sight of them? 
In fact, if we were conscious of all associative links we should be 
simply remembering everything we ever experienced. 

Veblen, in his Theory of the Leisure Class, showed how the 
impulses of emulation build up "pecuniary canons of taste," — 
cause us to think obviously expensive commodities to be intrin- 
sically beautiful. This associationism might have helped him to a 
truer theory of the "sense of workmanship." Conscious pursuit 
of excellence for its own sake, therefore, we attribute to associa- 
tions with human approval, which apparently in part is instinc- 
tively sought, but which also is grounded in many associations of 
* utilities ' which have resulted from other people's approval of us. 

There are, moreover, many other habitual elements in the drive 
of workmanship. The foregoing innate springs of action, inter- 
acting with external circumstances, force the subject to take up an 
occupation. As he learns it, the acquired mechanisms become 
more and more smoothly operative, many of the antagonistic re- 
ponses of mere clumsiness are lost; and so, as Woodworth says, 
every acquired mechanism becomes something of a drive by itself. 
It is along this line that we account for the curious attractiveness 
which problems possess that are suited to our capacity. As a 
system of knowledge is enlarged, say in history or language or 
baseball lore, not only are details more easily remembered because 
of the increasing number of associations which reach out to meet 
them, but the pursuit of such missing links becomes increasingly 
vigorous. This result is facilitated, to be sure, by the withering 



28o ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

from disuse of other interests that originally competed strongly 
with the one which was elected to be intensively cultivated. 

Now, what difference does it make, whether or not we call this 
complex mechanism an instinct of workmanship? We reply, the 
crucial question on which the dispute bears is, can the majority of 
men be trusted or trained to work equally well and wisely, 
whether or not their rewards are proportioned to their individual 
production? And a point of only less importance is how to reduce 
the * human costs ' in work, by attention to the instincts. It is 
only by close attention to each element in this so-called creative 
instinct that we can make our arrangements for education and for 
work most effective. The instincts which make up curiosity and 
the desire for novelty, for example, are naturally favorable to dis- 
covery of truth, but not to sustained labor which is monotonous. 
It is only by poetic license, moreover, that one can call such be- 
havior as we see in the infant's manipulations (showing these in- 
stincts nearly naked) ' creative.' If we relied on these instincts 
alone, our work would be desultory and inconsecutive and hence 
unproductive, like the activities of men in savage times. 

The drive of habitual elements, on the other hand, will be 
constant, whatever the disciplinary measures by which these 
habits were originally instilled. Our ordinary social and moral 
habits become second nature and not unpleasant, when they are 
finally inculcated by sufficient spankings; and similar it is with 
habits of industry. Training is most effective, however, when it 
follows the line of individual aptitude; this fact also is well-known 
to common experience. And unlike other elements, the desire for 
approval may be counted on always to give a bias toward socially 
serviceable activity. People are most likely to approve in us that 
conduct which is most favorable to themselves. The acclaim 
which soldiers have always had is in no small measure thus to be 
accounted for, although there are also many misleading associa- 
tions which cause admiration to be bestowed on those people who 
are in fact harmful to the admirers. 

It is of the greatest import, therefore, to know whether the im- 
pulse to do useful and efficient work is innate or is built up by 
associations of praise; for if social control were invoked by gov- 



WORK 281 

emors not only to dispense with private property but to suppress 
all personal praise — which Robert Owen was inclined to do ^ — 
the society might well find its ' instinct of workmanship ' was fast 
disappearing. For any engineering or therapeutic work, we can 
scarcely have our physics and physiology too accurate. 

Fear, Pugnacity, Loyalty 

Other unmercenary motives in work may be briefly mentioned. 
The reactions of fear and of escape from pain and confinement are 
at bottom instinctive and are extremely urgent, and the force of 
them may be transferred to other stimuli by association. They 
are thus tied artificially to a task when used as punishments in 
case the work is not done satisfactorily. This process of arti- 
ficially tying an original drive to a stimulus that was natively in- 
different or repulsive, is shown most clearly by the building up of 
the wealth motive under division of labor. * Fear ' of disgrace or 
of poverty, on the other hand, are not instinctive fear; these are 
imaginative thwartings of the habitual seekings for wealth and 
for approval. The inner fear reactions do, it is true, easily become 
attached to all manner of stimuli, — witness the shock we feel at 
many an unexpected sight or sound. 

It is sometimes said that the fear motives, in mild form, are 
intrinsic incentives to certain kinds of * work,' — to adventure, 
exploration, gambling, or daredevil feats. Possibly; but there are 
many other elements in the love of adventure too, — the acclaim 
to successful pioneers, curiosity, and the booty hoped for. So 
that whatever fear exists may still be a deterrent, although bolder 
spirits are less affected by it in merely imaginative form. 

The energy of the pugnacious or rage responses can conceivably 
be put to work by skillfully arranged contexts. When the desire 
for approval is obstructed, as by ridicule, reproof or challenge, the 
worker's anger is aroused, and some of his ire will be vented on his 
task. It is quite common to speak of the spur of * righteous 
anger ' to reformers, physicians, soldiers. As will be explained in 
a moment, however, anger in the industrial world is usually 
opposed to work. 

^ F. Podmore, Robert Owen, p. 177. 



282 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

Love, loyalty, devotion are names which apply, as Shand and 
McDougall have shown, not to pure instincts but to complexes of 
instincts and habits which converge upon some external objects, 
such as country, home, God, friends. It is very difficult, therefore, 
to generalize to any good purpose, about ' loyalty,' as if it were an 
instinct. The usual connection between love and work is through 
the goods which work procures for loved ones. It is interesting to 
use these familiar devotions as analogies in speculation on how 
patriotism, for example, might gradually be extended to include 
industrial service, and how by kindly and honest services business 
houses can promote loyalty among their employees. 

The scope of original love is, we have seen, exceptionally ill- 
defined. ' Liking ' and ' loving ' are akin in popular speech, but 
psychologically, liking or seeking is characteristic of the whole 
range of positive or pleasant reactions. Any object associated 
with a pleasant response may become likable, and, so far as con- 
sciousness reveals, wanted for its own sake. McDougall speaks a 
little as if any unselfish motive must have some of the parental 
impulse in it, but we have seen that ' selfish ' seeking for social 
approval often leads to the most altruistic conduct, and that such 
conduct becomes so habitual that the original self-reference be- 
comes entirely obscured to the subject. (McDougall recognizes 
this fact in his account of the ' self -regarding sentiment.') 

The emulative motives, ranging from mere desire for society 
and friendly intercourse and approval with dread of anything like 
ostracism, to strife for preeminence and mastery (and to envy of 
others who succeed better in these respects), are to be counted in 
here again. When they are considered as part of the ' creative 
impulse,' they have been refined to the ideal of praiseworthiness; 
but the more common case, we all know, is that of working for the 
approval of real persons, — and the more there are of them the 
better. Most of us will sacrifice praiseworthiness if only we can 
get the visible marks of distinction. This group of motives is 
susceptible in an unusual degree of being harnessed to tasks with- 
out the medium of material reward; work whose payment is 
known to be chiefly in esteem is something quite familiar. Every 
mother uses this principle at times, and business houses are be- 



WORK 283 

coming conscious that competitions among their employees may 
be used to the benefit of all concerned. Hierarchies, as in the 
priesthood, academic circles, and the army, seem clearly to provide 
spurs to energy in addition to the material emoluments, and they 
are the more effective, just as money payments are, the more 
accurately that prizes are apportioned to merit. Adam Smith 
was a keen psychologist, as usual, when he remarked : 

And thus, place, that great object which divides the wives of aldermen, 
is the end of half the labors of human life. . . . Rank, distinction, pre- 
eminence, no man despises, unless he is either raised very much above, or 
sunk very much below, the ordinary standard of hiunan nature.' 

Inventors and Money Makers 

Let us consider for a moment the psychology of a peculiarly 
important kind of work, — the improvement of the industrial 
arts. This is the function of both the inventor and the entre- 
preneur or manager, and their services correspond to two phases 
of the learning or reasoning process; the inventor as such suggests 
a technical solution of an economic problem, and the entre- 
preneur tries it out in the whole economic situation. 

Taussig's treatment of this topic is in the main admirable, 
though, as we have indicated, the ' instinct of contrivance ' sug- 
gests a misleading oversimplification. 

Invention is the finding of new combinations of old tricks or 
responses, which will enable us successfully to deal with a baflling 
situation. It is simply an act of reasoning, and like all reasoning, is 
carried out by trial and error. The instincts comprehended under 
contrivance, manipulation and curiosity, undoubtedly play a part 
in invention, especially in making the work attractive, regardless 
of material rewards; but the direction of people's abilities toward 
certain kinds of invention is, as Taussig says, furthered by the 
prospect of gain. We are all inventors of one kind or another, for 
we aU solve problems.^ Cats are inventors; when their activities 

1 See above, Ch. V. 

^ Tarde's "invention and imitation" is a suggestive formula of social develop- 
ment; and it is quite true that new tricks spread in circles from the point of origin. 
But in our view both invention and imitation are acts of learning, and when we 
realize the ramifications of the learning process the formula does not look so simple. 



284 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

are directed toward certain problems in puzzle-boxes by the pros- 
pect of food, they invent solutions to those special problems 
rather than solutions to others, such as getting at mice or balls of 
twine. And if a good living were assured to all of us who would 
devote our time to contriving new devices of any kind, without 
regard to their practical usefulness, we can hardly doubt that a 
great craft of inventors would soon develop. It is true that neces- 
sity is the mother of invention, for all our reasoning, as we have 
seen, is always done in the forked-road situations where a solution 
is necessary in order to quiet our purposes. Not all these search- 
ing purposes, to be sure, are severely practical; some of them may 
develop out of instinctive explorative responses which may be 
called ' idle ' curiosity. 

That the inventive bent is stronger in some people than in 
others, and that it turns, in different individuals, to varying 
classes of problems, is but one illustration of the general fact which 
psychology is coming to acknowledge without being able as yet to 
explain, — that there are innate individual peculiarities of pro- 
cHvity or interest, which are not detailed instincts, but which 
direct in a general way the individual's learning, making him more 
interested in one subject-matter than another, enabling him to 
work hard at it and to do well in its execution. Poeta nascitur, non 
Jit, and similarly with inventors, musicians, athletes, and all per- 
sons with hobbies. As Taussig concludes, the inventing genius 
shades off into our common ingenuity, and while the great inven- 
tor will almost starve, if necessary, to ply his beloved trade — 
just as the poet and vagabond will — there is no question that re- 
wards of wealth turn lesser lights toward inventing, and turn all 
inventors in some degree toward the problems that are most im- 
portant economically. As to the need of giving big prizes to the 
geniuses, that is a problem common to all economic motives, and 
it properly belongs to the subject of economic welfare. 

The Business Man as Inventor 

In regard to the business man as competitive director of eco- 
nomic processes, he is always partly an inventor, for he must 
continually devise new combinations of methods to meet the 



WORK 285 

existing circumstances. And he not only devises methods but he 
tries them out and stakes his wages on their success. The risk 
incident to new ventures is therefore really characteristic of the 
business man; a business man who makes more than wages and 
yet runs no more than a laborer's risk is in fact a landlord, is the 
proprietor of an external source of differential gain. 

As we have seen in our consideration of the motives to adven- 
ture, it is doubtful if risk in its pure state is an allurement to any- 
one; the case is simply that the lure of possible gain overcomes the 
disinclination from fear of loss. With the increase of knowledge, 
risk becomes more cleariy a cost, which will be incurred only on 
some kind of insurance principles. Business profits are a rough 
kind of insurance; and in all lotteries, the greater the chance of 
loss, in general the larger must be the uncertain prize. But we 
should not argue that this tendency is at all exact; the obstacles 
of ignorance and of obsolete habits are to be reckoned with. The 
argument is rather that judgment on the timeliness of new de- 
vices in the whole economic situation — judgment whether the 
device will * pay,' which means whether people will want it 
badly enough to pay all the costs involved in devising, making and 
selling it — and assumption of the risks connected with that 
judgment, constitute a productive service as much as the tech- 
nical contrivance. At this point we take issue with Veblen, who 
thinks the technical men are the real producers, on whom the 
men who accidentally own capital fatten parasitically. The use of 
monopoly power to bargain unfairly with penniless inventors is of 
course a phase of our existing situation that is to be reckoned with, 
but the inference that society would be best served by turning the 
control of industry over to the technical men is too hasty. 

As the business man is always something of an inventor himself, 
he partakes of the intrinsic rewards of inventing, by the satisfac- 
tion of curiosity, and his other contriving instincts. Loyalty to an 
enterprise he has been identified with, and pride in its reputation, 
are, of course, strong motive forces. The appeal of personal 
domination, which is in between emulation and rage, is a force in 
business direction too, but only because society has not further 
limited the power which control of industry gives, nor instilled 



286 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

sufl5cient habits of thought concerning social welfare, to run 
counter to the domination motives. As to the wealth motive, the 
same remarks as made above concerning inventors apply. 

The Irksomeness of Labor — Fatigue 

Let us now inquire more closely into the nature of the psychic 
resistances to work. It is widely recognized now, that although 
labor may be, on the whole, a curse, it is by no means always irk- 
some. Probably most of us feel a predominating enjo3rment of our 
work during the earlier part of the day, or at least in certain 
moods. But whenever the work is felt to be distinctly irksome, 
that fact may probably be ascribed to unpleasant or negative re- 
actions, chiefly of the obscure inner sort that Cannon studied. 
These, in turn, are to be traced to any of at least three fairly dis- 
tinct sources, namely, (i) fatigue and ill health, (2) disagreeable 
surroundings at work, (3) thwarted positive impulses (oppor- 
tunity cost). 

Most obvious is the double source of fatigue and ill health. We 
class them together because fatigue may in part be conceived as 
temporary illness, in which the acid products of exertion in the 
body give rise to unpleasant reactions or inhibitions (which we 
have lumped together as ''the appetite of repose," on account of 
the recurring character of the condition) comparable to the ef- 
fects produced by toxins and bacteria in disease. The energy- 
stores of the neuro-muscular mechanisms just used, become, of 
course, considerably depleted, yet in the muscles and nerve-fibers 
themselves the exhaustion is not complete in severe fatigue. 
Stimulation of these muscles is still possible through other circuits, 
with an incidental repression of the subjective evidence of fatigue. 
Such is the case when young people who have become tired by 
working during the day go to a dance at night, or when martial 
music suddenly reaches the weary traveler.^ 

Doubtless there are always numerous dormant reserves like 
these, which can be tapped by proper variation in the stimuli 
of the situation. Many factories are instituting fifteen-minute 
rest periods in the midst of each half-day (reminiscent of the 

1 P. G. Stiles, The Nervous System and its Conservation (i9i4)j Ch. VIII. 



WORK 287 

' recess ' of school days !) ; the success of which probably depends 
more on the * moral ' refreshment than on purely muscular re- 
cuperation. In some cases music is served up with the work.^ 
It must be conceded that this process of tapping reserves in many 
cases cannot be done day after day without injury to the health. 
Dancing of evenings can be overdone. Yet we are by no means to 
presume that any extra zeal aroused on the job by psychological 
devices reduces the worker's health or strength or recreation. 
Even if it be assumed that his total output of energy day by day 
is constant, which is not probable, the extra work done in the 
mood of contentment may merely use the energy which otherwise 
would be spent in ' kicking against the pricks,' that is, in the sum 
of the reactions which try to avoid the unpleasant situation. 

Monotony is a real curse in work. Any narrow set of responses 
early becomes fatigued, and the fresh impulses held in leash give 
rise to an unpleasant restlessness. Something of monotony is not 
lacking in any activity under the sun, but it is accentuated to the 
last degree in the semi-automatic machine feeder which division of 
labor has finally produced. To the psychologist's provocative 
remark that feeble-minded people make the best machine opera- 
tors, it is sometimes replied with some truth that many workers 
like a narrow routine, because the performance of it becomes so 
automatic by habit that they are imaginatively released to Kve in 
a world of fancy. The last thing they want to do, this reply con- 
tinues, is to have to think about their work, to solve fresh prob- 
lems continually. But the best test thus far available lies in the 
figures of * labor turnover.' These statistics are said to show that 
workers stay at the repetitive jobs a shorter time, on the average, 
than at work involving more variety,^ although the material has 
not been carefully studied from this point of view. 

^ Phonographs were installed in three sorting rooms of the Minneapolis post 
offices and played frequently while some fifty night clerks worked. A comparison 
of two nights when equal amounts of maU were sorted by an equal number of clerks 
at three stations, one night without music, one with music, showed that 14 per cent 
more errors were made on the evening without music, and the total time taken was 
also about 12 per cent longer the evening without music. These comparisons were 
made about a week after the installation was first made. See Minneapolis Tribune, 
August 21, 1921. 

' Link (Employment Psychology, p. 112) makes the statement based upon care- 



288 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

It is to be noticed, however, that no large proportion of even 
factory work is of this extremely monotonous character. Slichter 

says: 

It is doubtful whether half of factory workers are engaged in highly repet- 
itive work. Most unskilled laborers, truckers, lumpers, most skilled laborers 
(artisans) , and many semi-skilled hand laborers are engaged in work which is 
not a repetition of the identical movements. 

The tendency, he continues, clearly is for the repetitive nature of factory 
work to increase, and "scientific management" with its policy of subdividing 
and standardizing has given the tendency a great impetus.^ 

The manager's ideal seems to be reached in something like the 
Ford Motor shops, where nearly all the operations are so minute 
that anyone can soon learn to repeat them. But machinery that 
has become semi-automatic is well on the way to becoming com- 
pletely automatic, which is the best case of all. 

The upshot of it is that fatigue-effects and ' the case for the 
shorter working day ' are not quite synonymous. Short working 
hours, to be sure, have many potentialities in the way of cultural 
and civic development outside the working place, and no doubt 
their recreational effect is often sufi&cient to increase production. 
Comparative studies on production as compared with hours of 
labor are of extreme importance. But continual shortening of 

ful study of conditions in a large American munitions factory, that " The turnover, 
among such (machine) operators, is unusually large for a variety of reasons, most 
prominent among which is the monotony and strain of the work." 

Slichter, who has made the most elaborate analysis of turnover figures in general, 
gives the same impression, saying that to interest men in their work there must be 
"more or less variety. The same thing done continuously soon becomes tiresome 
physically and mentally " (The Turnover of Factory Labor, p. i88). He also 
finds (Ch. IV) that the turnover is strikingly high in certain relatively unattractive 
jobs within a given plant, and especially monotonous work falls in this class. 

It is interesting that Herbert Spencer hit this nail on the head: "Clearly these 
adjustments brought in on account of mechanical inventions make the motions of 
the workman himself relatively automatic. At the same time the monotonous atten- 
tion required, taxing special parts of the nervous system and leaving others inactive, 
entails positive as well as negative injury" (Sociology, IV, p. 253). Reitell, who 
quotes this statement (Jour. Pol. Econ. 26: 274), presents evidence from the steel 
industry to show that such effects are offset by the greater productivity of labor and 
exemption from many strenuous tasks which machinery has brought about. Cf. 
Taussig, Inventors and Money-Makers, p. 62. 

1 Op. ciL, pp. 188, 189. 



WORK 289 

hours is not necessarily the only nor the best remedy for fatigue 
and monotony. Deliberate arrangements for variety in tasks, for 
the stimulation of initiative and ingenuity/ especially by well- 
planned lines of promotion and by marks of distinction for merit, 
are already used by progressive employers in conjunction with 
reasonable hours to secure the maximum of production and com- 
fort. 

The use of music, singing and dancing as recreative and stimu- 
lating features in the workshop is a return to an age-long practice, 
connected obscurely with the physiology of rhythm. The eminent 
German economist Biicher has investigated this matter histori- 
cally, and finds that from the earliest times people have been 
wont to carry on various tasks ' to the time ' of chanting or other 
music. The frontispiece of his Arbeit and Rhythmus shows an 
ancient Greek sculpture of four workers kneading bread while a 
fifth is playing the flute; and the book contains a large collection 
of work songs from different lands and times in numerous occupa- 
tions. All of us are somewhat familiar with sailors' chanteys, 
smiths' songs, and marching tunes, and with the person who 
spontaneously sings or whistles at his work. 

The difi&cult question is as to the relationship, — what's the 
reason for it? Some cooperative activities, such as working a 
windlass, prying at a heavy weight, performing a gymnastic 
figure, are evidently much facilitated as to coordination by 
sounds or other signals adjusted to the technical rhythm of the 
work.^ But in many efiforts like the bread baking, marching and 
dancing, we go out of our way to perform in concert to music. 
We like to do them better that way. To a considerable extent 
this pleasure is associative; the music, even during work, calls up 

1 Meyer Bloomfield, a leader in the new profession of employment management, 
has given some suggestions toward encouraging employees to "think on the job." 
See R. W. Kelly, Hiring the Worker (1918), p. 48. 

^ A modem factory example of this kind is suggested by Link: "The prelim- 
inary study of typical dial machines had revealed that the fundamental requirement 
was the ability to acquire a certain bodily rhythm in feeding material into the dial 
and in timing the movements of the hand and arm with those of the machine. Some 
operators acquired this rhythm very readily, others only after a long time, and still 
others never." Op. cit., p. 118. Apparently music would have been valuable in this 
case. 



290 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

the pleasant recreative responses that were active formerly along 
with the musical sounds, and these responses, by secretions or 
otherwise, reinforce our work responses, as does other emotional 
excitement. Beyond these points there may well be ways of play- 
ing on innate rhythm-mechanisms to promote work, but the mat- 
ter is still too obscure to make further comment worth while at 
this place. 

Disagreeable Surroundings and Indignity 

The second class of causes of irksomeness in work includes dis- 
agreeable odors, sounds, heat, dampness or darkness, dust, fumes, 
lint, and so on. Nature has provided some protection against 
these offenses by the wonderful mechanisms of adaptation in the 
sense-organs, so that the worker gradually becomes inured to 
them. Such protection is inadequate, however, and when labor 
becomes scarce the turnover figures show up the more repulsive 
working conditions and it becomes profitable to make consider- 
able expenditures to abolish them. 

A third case of repugnance to labor is found in unpleasant or 
negative reactions which are stimulated by the thwarting of posi- 
tive impulses or by circumstances not covered by the preceding 
groups. In studying the instincts of rage, we learned that these 
are stimulated by the hampering of nearly any other response 
which has been started. Compulsion seems to be instinctively 
fought. Unreasoning anger and insistence on personal domination 
is an outstanding feature of labor struggles, on both sides, accord- 
ing to all observers, and these impulses are usually born of original 
disputes over wages. Even in self-imposed tasks, the element of 
compulsion often makes us rebel, run away, commit sabotage 
against ourselves. The characteristic vagueness and idiosyncrasy 
of introspection make the situation difficult to analyze, but it 
seems clear that when we can work whole-heartedly, which means 
that the vagrant impulses are not stirring, whatever unpleasant- 
ness tinges our consciousness may be traced to the other two 
cases. In this direction the Freudian doctrines will ultimately be 
of service, when they have become more closely aligned with 
physiology. 



WORK 291 

The motives centering about social approval or disapproval are 
very important in this group. So far as certain labor is conven- 
tionally held in contempt, and the laborer realizes it, the work is 
made disagreeable to him by frequent arousal of the unpleasant 
reactions of shame. College boys doing menial work have curious 
reversals of feeling in this respect; some people honor them for it, 
and others snub them, so that doing the same work, the boys' 
emotions vary according to who sees them doing it. This source of 
irksomeness was the point of Veblen's earlier article on "The In- 
stinct of Workmanship and the Irksomeness of Labor." He 
pointed out that great physical privations are gaily undergone in 
war and sport, because these occupations are held in esteem ; and 
consequently it is hardly the fatigue but rather the contumely of 
ordinary work which make it repulsive. That is an extreme posi- 
tion, but it contains the truth that conventional ideas concerning 
the dignity or indignity of labor count for much in making it at- 
tractive or the reverse. The situation has been aggravated by 
tyrannical masters and petty officials, who treat all common 
laborers as if they are necessarily destitute of self-respect, pride 
and hope of advancement,^ and by the frequent loss of identity of 
each man's work, which removes from him another possible source 
of gaining esteem. 

' Unproductive Surplus ' in Wages 

Once more we find the consideration of producers' motives lead- 
ing us to the doctrine of rent. The rent element in wages is closely 
comparable to that in interest; if all wages were cut off from their 
recipients, obviously a good part of the work would stop, never- 
theless many individuals are able to get extra large payments for 
their personal services, on account of keen competition among 
buyers. If these individuals were unable to get more than a 
considerably less amount, they would still render just the same 
services. Your industrial managers, and other much-wanted in- 
dividuals, who get $25,000 or $100,000 or more a year, might, it is 
thought, by skillful means be trimmed down to some average sub- 
sistence like $2500, and they would still have as much as is good 

^ Cf. Slichter, op. cit., pp. 192-193. 



292 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

for them, whilst the rest of us could be rescued from our poverty 
by redistribution of this ' surplus.' It is not denied that the serv- 
ices of such gifted people are often ' worth ' what they are paid, 
if we had to choose between having them and not having them; 
but this one-sided standard, if the only one applied, would justify 
every monopoly price. 

Again, we have the radical proposals of various sorts of social- 
ism, which could guarantee everyone a comfortable subsistence 
and would allow no one to get very much more, and besides this 
there are various less heroic proposals. Progressive taxation of 
' earned ' incomes, for example, even increasing sharply at each 
step, will not discourage the more valuable men's industry, 
according to the surplus theory. We shall not discuss any of 
these programs in detail, but shall point out a few general con- 
siderations springing from the subject of motives. 

The laissez-faire economist will justify the arrangement of 
allowing each man to get all he can for his services, in fair open 
competition, on the grounds that : 

1 . Because of the expansibility of each man's wants for wealth, 
payment according to results is the most reliable way of getting 
each to do his utmost work. If, on the other hand, the wealth he is 
to receive is a fixed quantity regardless of what he does (which is 
now the condition of very few men's employment, notwithstand- 
ing the socialist writers' analogies drawn from army, scientific or 
governmental posts), his public spirit and his desire for acclaim 
will be a much less certain stimulus to production, especially 
since necessarily all cannot be given distinction. With production 
so greatly reduced, equal distribution will have benefited no one. 

2. In accordance with the general theory of value, high wages 
in any occupation, such as that of the business manager, is an in- 
dication that there is a scarcity of people able to do that kind of 
work relative to demands for it ; and is at the same time an auto- 
matic inducement to the rising generation and to others who have 
any mobility, to get into that occupation and relieve the scarcity, 
instead of crowding still further an already abundant supply in 
other occupations. If a community has plenty of common la- 
borers and few skilled artisans, and if it insists on paying all alike. 



WORK 293 

both as to wages and working conditions in general, there is little 
prospect that common laborers will take the trouble to learn the 
skilled trades, and so the proportions between the two groups will 
become more and more maladjusted. There is a constant tend- 
ency, given free competition, to the equalization of wages as well 
as profits between occupations. 

3. Within each occupation, the laissez-faire economist would 
now say, there is no tendency toward equality of wages between 
individuals, because some men are naturally better workers than 
others. The more valuable one perhaps gets something like a 
rent, but the peculiar merit of free competition in this respect is 
that it tends to put each man where he is most needed, that is, 
where the job he can do is so much demanded that this employer 
can better afford to hire him than any other employer. The cities 
which have the most baseball or moving picture or grand opera 
enthusiasts, for example, are thus assured of getting the best 
talent, and such talent is accordingly made the most of. 

Now there are plenty of objections to be made to all these prop- 
ositions, into the mazes of which we cannot just now go. It will 
be said, for example, that this talk of value as an indicator of the 
greatest demand refers only to greatest purchasing power, and 
that an unjustifiable part of the world's productive energy is now 
drawn into the production of folderols for the rich oligarchy. 
Again, one may contend that while competition has some tend- 
ency to put men where they are most needed, it cannot perform 
this fxmction as quickly and smoothly and democratically as 
some organized public authority can (state, syndicate, guild or 
what not). If we do guarantee everyone an equal emolument, 
this reply goes on, we shall not leave them all to shift for them- 
selves; we shall train each at public expense for the job for which 
he is best fitted, and we shall then distribute all where they are 
most needed by the community as a whole, not according to the 
bids of the money bags. 

Judgment on the merits of this dispute depends on a great 
many factors which have to do with the efficiency of any public 
service, especially a public service swelled to direct all large-scale 
economic operations as well as the numerous other functions of 



294 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

government. The matter is so complex that our knowledge of mo- 
tives will take us but a little way. We have seen that human 
nature in general is plastic and teachable; in this circumstance 
lies hope both for socialists and individualists. Both must rely for 
amelioration on an increase of knowledge and of correspondingly 
wise social control. The public service will presumably become 
capable of better things progressively as the citizens become 
educated in democracy, but this same education may be expected 
to make private business more democratic, with the road to talent 
more open than ever before. 

The Hope in Emulation 

The pivotal question, however, is whether people in the mass 
can be trained to labor for the common good anywhere nearly as 
assiduously as they have always labored for their own interest 
and that of their immediate circle. Past experience in many ways 
tends to validate Taussig's opinion that, although there are 
always a goodly number of people who are innately capable of 
such large devotion, the masses probably could not ever be edu- 
cated up to it. Socialistic and cooperative reformers generally 
may be assigned to the first and smaller group ; and it is suspected 
that the exuberance of their own pubUc zeal leads them to hope 
impossible transformations of motives, by education, in the rank 
and file. One may easily overdo this line of argument, for we 
know that even the poor thing we have to offer as education to- 
day, no matter to whom it is applied, pretty generally has the 
effect of giving its object wider and less selfish interests. 

Yet the facts of heredity in general and of innate mental varia- 
bility, as shown by accumulating tests, make the hypothesis 
plausible that some individuals may always be expected to have 
pugnacious or predatory impulses stronger in proportion to the 
other elements in their nature than is the case with other individ- 
uals of their generation. It would be foolish to expect to train all 
men into poets or contortionists, — though much could be accom- 
phshed in these directions; and it may be equally futile to hope to 
instill into all the virtuous will which makes one love his neighbor 
as himself. The great strength of the system of competition, 



WORK 295 

from the standpoint of production, is that it does not depend upon 
all people wanting the same things, such as the public welfare or 
the honor of being considered a good citizen, or workmanship for 
its own sake, or exemption from punishment, but it appeals to 
each through whatever wants will move him. You do not have to 
depend upon Smith the baker being a kindly man or an incor- 
ruptible official, nor even to concern yourself about what sort of 
thing he does want. You give him money and get your bread, 
and proceed similarly with Jones the butcher, and then they make 
themselves happy each in his own way. The desire for wealth, 
therefore, is admirably adapted to appealing effectively to all men 
if their interests are bound to be diverse. 

There are two master motives in human nature, however, 
which all states have played upon to develop whatever good cit- 
izenship they can boast of, and these may conceivably be en- 
gineered further toward some such goal as the socialists propose. 
We mean the desire for social approval and the dread of pain or 
confinement. Social control, as we have insisted several times, 
rests principally upon these foundations, in that laws and cus- 
toms so far as they are generally observed, are observed by the 
many because it is honorable and decent (i. e., respectable, praise- 
worthy) to be law-abiding, and by the few because physical pun- 
ishment is the penalty for infraction. Writers frequently point 
out that the only communist societies which have achieved a 
measure of success are those bound by strong religious ties, such 
as the Shakers. In our view such religious sanctions are blends 
of original love of approval and fear, as is good citizenship in 
general. 

But to raise permanently the standards of honor or citizenship 
to which everyone can be expected to conform, with the necessity 
of punishing only a small proportion, is a slow and uncertain mat- 
ter, for customs which are more honored in the breach than in the 
observance are worse than none at all. The Russian experiment in 
communism appears now (1920) to be breaking down and losing 
the S5anpathy of labor leaders in other parts of the world. Just be- 
cause it was not able over night to instill devotion to the common 
good into the common workers, and hence had to resort to whole- 



296 ECONOMIC MOTIVES 

sale military compulsion. Slavery called by any other name tastes 
as bitter to all of us. 

Out of the mass of conflicting testimony from that unhappy 
country let us take one straw to indicate the wind. On Easter 
1920 the official Soviet paper was filled with articles by Lenin and 
other leaders, 

all devoted to the question of labour in the SociaUst State and the need in 
the present crisis for self-devotion to labour of citizens conscious of the 
country's crisis, and for compulsion for slackers; aU explaining the differ- 
ence between compulsion and discipUned labour in the capitalist State and 
the same in the Socialist State by saying that in one men were working for 
employers, and in the latter each man was working for the good of all, in- 
cluding himself.^ 

Even assuming that the governmental machinery were run in a 
perfectly disinterested manner for the whole society, it seems vain 
to us to expect to move masses of people, accustomed to individ- 
ualism, by this perfect but cold logic of altruism. It is no use 
either to hope for the virtuous will from mere enlightenment; 
because there are too many real conflicts between the individual's 
natural vital interests and the interests of his society, — too many 
occasions when for the public weal, if he is a good citizen, he must 
want to sacrifice himself, even to the death. The egoist will be 
made only more cunning by a larger knowledge of the laws of 
nature. 

But there are seeds of devotion in human nature, whether they 
be ultimately instinctive desires for social approval or parental 
instincts or what not, which by long and careful watering are 
capable of developing the flower of the will to self-sacrifice. This 
will we now see on a grand scale in the nobility of armies, but it is 
revealed on only a less grand scale in the ordinary honesty, truth- 
fulness, and kindly helpfulness of common life. Such plants of 
honor and compassion, we believe, may be continually nurtured 
to higher levels, improving the provision for all interests, what- 
ever may be the ultimate limits of their growth. 

1 Moscow correspondence, Manchester Guardian Weekly, April 23, 1920. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Abbot, E. S.,86n. 

Accumulation, see Saving. 

Acquisitiveness, 123. 

Action system, 88. 

Acts, in relation to value, 239. 

Adaptation, 152, 153. 

Adrenalin, 135. 

Advertising, 225. 

Affections, see Passions of human nature. 

Altruism, 201. See Egoism, Self-interest. 

Ambiguity, 168, 169. 

Animal psychology, 85. 

Antagonism and reinforcement, 154. 

Appetites, 104 f., 113, 129. 

Applications of psychology to economics, 
205 f. 

Aptitudes (native capacities), loi, 102, 
127 f. 

Aristotle, 27 f., 224, 257. 

Artificial and natural elements in wants, 
223. 

Association of ideas: laws of, according 
to Aristotle, 28, Hobbes, 37, James 
MiU, 67 f.; unconscious links in, 69, 
78, 116, 120, 121, 146, 147; connec- 
tion with habit formation, 145 f.; in 
reasoning, 170, 171; in acquiring new 
interests, 199, 213 f.; in relation to 
motives in work, 279-281. 

Associationist hedonism, 26 f., 43 f-, 67 f.; 
reconciliation with modem functional- 
ism, 189 f . 

Aufgabe, 177 f. 

Automatic saving, 260 f. 

Avarice, 212. See Passions. 

Averages of large numbers, see Statistical 
methods. 

Bagehot, Walter, 10. 

Bain, Alexander, 67 f., 94. 

'Baulking' (Wallas), 129. 

Behavior situation (Holt), 87 f.; and 

utility, 229-232; behaviorist sciences, 

psychology and economics, 14, 208; 

behaviorist movement in psychology, 

83 f. 



Bentham, Jeremy, 54 f., 274. 

Bloomfield, M., 289 n. 

Bohm-Bawerk, E., 208, 209, 230, 255- 

257- 
Biicher, K., 213, 260, 270, 271, 289. 
Business Psychology, 10. 

Calculations of utility, see Felicific 

calculus, Valuation. 
Cannon, W. B., 133-135, 286. 
Capital, accumulation of, see Saving; 

social advantage of, 254. 
Carver, T. N., 200, 249-252, 261. 
Cause, psychological and physical, 4 n., 

83- 

'Censor,' 184. 

Character, 16. 

Chase, H. W., 86 n., 135, 136. 

Choice, 230. 

Clark, J. B., 8. 

Clark, J. M., 129 n., 227. 

Clark, V.S., 264. 

CoUectional economy, 271. 

Comparison of pleasures and pains, see 
Felicific calculus. 

Competition, 294, 295; psychological 
roots of, 249 f. 

Compulsion, 290, 295, 296. 

Conditioned reflex, 147 f., 211; and 
pleasure-pain, 155; in valuation, 240, 
241. iSee Habits and habit formation. 

Conflict of motives, 182 f.; among hu- 
man beings, 250-253. 

Conscience, 198. 

Consciousness, relation to behavior, 89 f.; 
emotional, pleasant and unpleasant, 
132 f. 

Consumer's surplus, psychological basis 
of, 243 f. 

Consumption, 208; causes and results of, 

4- 
Contiguity, see Association of ideas. 
Contrivance, 116, 127, 283, 284. See 

Workmanship. 
Control of wants, 225 f. 
Conventions, see Custom. 



300 



INDEX 



Cooley, C. H., 202 n., 217. 
Cost, psychological background of, 229f.; 
ultimate, 235!.; opportunity, 236, 

237- 

Creative impulse, 276 f. See Workman- 
ship. 

Crises in custom, 217. 

Culture, 221. 

Curiosity, 116; in fashion, 219, 278, 280, 
284. 

Custom, 202, 216 f.; role in valuation, 
246; and work, 271, 272, 291 f., 295, 
296. 

Darwin, Charles, 102. 

Davenport, H. J., 236. 

Defense instincts, 114. 

Demand, 239; curves of in relation to 
utility curves, 241 f.; inertia of, 243. 

Desire, 71; for wealth, 212. 

'Determining tendency', 177 f. 

Dewey, John, 170, 258. 

Dibblee, G. B., 241, 245. 

Diminishing productivity, 8; and dimin- 
ishing utility, 242, 249. See Produc- 
tivity. 

Diminishing utility, see Utility. 

'Dispositions ' (Wallas) , 98 n. 

Distinction, desire for, 49 f. See Emula- 
tion. 

Distribution, psychological problems in, 
7. 

'Disturbing' motives, 10. 

Disutility, 229, 235 f. 

Division of labor, Adam Smith on, 5; 
effect on workers, 5, 6. 

'Drives,' 134 f.; in habit formation, 
150 f.; in reasoning situation, 177 f.; 
instincts versus habits, 188 f . See 
Motives. 

Dunlap, Knight, 91 n., 139. 

Economic determinism, 11; laws, 205, 

206; man, 246. 
Educability of motives, 62 f.; limits of, 

69, 78 f., 200 f., 29s, 296. See moral 

education. 
Egoism, 36, 43 f., 56, 201, 212, 213, 250, 

251, 280, 282, 296. 
Emotions, in common-sense analysis, 22; 

general theory on, 131 f.; drives to 

establish habits, 197 f. 
Emulation, 49 f., 118 f., 215 f., 252, 278, 

279, 282, 294-296. 



Entrepreneurs, 284-285. 

Epistemological controversies, 41. 

Esthetic wants, 223, 224, 270. 

Evaluation of pleasures and pains, see 
Felicific calculus. 

Evolution of wants, 208 f . 

Evolutionary scale of innate responses, 
102 f. 

Exchange, 112 f.; development of peace- 
able, 250-252. 

Fallacy of different planes, 192. 

Fashion, 216 f. 

Fatigue, 286, 287. 

Fear, 281; instinctive, 114-115. 

Feeling, Bentham on, 55 f. See Pleas- 
ure and pain. 

Felicific Calculus, 193, 194, 232; accord- 
ing to Bentham, 59 f.; the mills, 76. 

Fetter, F. A., 19 n., 208, 238, 275. 

Fisher, Irving, 208, 229, 230, 238, 257, 
262, 277. 

Fite, W., 139, 251. 

Food getting instincts, 114. 

Foundations of economics, mental and 
physical, 3 f . 

Franklin, Benjamin, 254. 

Freud, S., 183, 185. 

Freudian psychology, 86, 129, 130, 160^ 
162, 176, 183 f.; evaluation of, 185 f. 

'General innate tendencies,' 127 f. 
Greatest happiness principle, see Hedon- 
ism. 
Green, D. I., 236. 
Gregarious instincts, 118. 
Grotius, H., 34 f. 

Habits and habit formation: in common- 
sense analysis, 22; associationists on, 
77 f.; connection with association of 
ideas, 145 f.; principles of (learning), 
147 f.; basis of reasoning, 167 f.; in 
custom, 217; in utility, 230; in rela- 
tion to value, 239; in relation to work 
motives, 279-281. See Conditioned 
reflex. 

Hart, B., 176 n., 183 n. 

Hartley, Thomas, 78 n. 

Hecht, Selig, 153 n., 233. 

Hedonic Calculus, see Felicific calculus. 

Hedonism, ethical, 54-57. 

Hedonism, psychological, early connec- 
tion with economics, 11; apparent 



INDEX 



301 



exceptions to, 11 f.; a spontaneous 
explanation, 20 f.; circular reasoning 
in, 20, 21; and association psychology, 
21; of Aristotle, 27 f.; Hobbes, 37 f.; 
Adam Smith, 52 f.; Bentham, 54 f.; 
James Mill, 70 f.; qualified acceptance 
of, 189 f.; premises broadly true, 205, 
206. See Associationist hedonism. 

Herrick, C. Judson, 90, 133, 138 n., 141, 
142, 148, 149. 157, 191 n. 

Hobbes, Thomas, 36 f. 

Hobhouse, L. T., 103 n., 155 f. 

Hobson, J. A., 209, 261, 265, 273 n., 
277. 

Hocking, W. E., 24 n., 113. 

Holmes, S. J., 103 n., 139 n., 155. 

Holt, E. B., 14 n., 84 n., 85, 87, 90, 104, 
106, 179, 181, 183, 184. 

Human nature, in economics, 3 f.; in 
conflict with pecuniary efl&ciency, 12. 

Hume, David, 41 n., 93, 275. 

Ideas, 83; in lower animals, 164 f. See 
Association. 

Illusions, 200. 

'Impatience' (Fisher), 257. 

Implicit surpluses, 245. 

Impulsiveness, a factor in valuation, 248; 
in saving , 269. 

Incentives to labor, 12. 

Income, psychic, 237, 238; streams of, 
262; earned and unearned, 255, 256. 

Indignity, 290, 291. 

Individual differences, 210, 217, 246, 
247, 284, 294; in mental traits, 201. 

Inertia of large numbers, 206. 

Infinitesimal increments, 242, 243. 

Inheritance, 266, 267. 

inner reflexes, 113. 

Instincts, in common-sense analysis, 22; 
Grotius on social, 35; according to 
Adam Smith, 43 f.; James Mill, 75; 
general theory on, 92 f.; defined, 95; 
references to literature on, 97 n.; 
inventory of human, 109 f.; other 
alleged, 121 f.; importance of distin- 
guishing from intelligence, 130; rela- 
tion to emotions, 131 f.; are they 
prime movers? 188 f.; leave marks on 
adult wants, 197; 'creative,' 276 f. 

Institution, 212; of interest, 256 f. 

Integration of responses, 179 f. 

InteUectualism, 181, 205. See Ration- 
ality. 



Intelligence, 163; and valuation, 253; 
in relation to work ,272. See Learning. 

Interaction, 83. 

Interest, psychological, 196, 199. See 
Instincts, Pleasure and pain; on 
capital, see Saving. 

Interpretation of dreams, 183 f. 

Introspection, 83, 84. 

Invention, 283, 284; need of under- 
standing, 5; and capital, 256. 

Irksomeness of labor, 286 f. 

Issues depending on instincts, 23 f . 

James, William, 83 n., 84 n,, 89, 98, 99, 

131 f., 161, 183, 199, 277. 
James-Lange theory, 131 f. 
Jevons, W. S., 208, 243, 274. 

Kelley, F. C, 12 n. 

Knowledge, in relation to wants, 211, 
227; in relation to valuation, 246, 
247; in relation to saving, 258-260. 

Labor, see Work; turnover, 287, 288. 

Language habits, 174, 175. 

Learning, general theory on, 144 f.; ele- 
ments in, 144, 145; connection with 
reasoning and rationality, 163 f.; ap- 
plied to economic wants, 210 f.; and 
valuation, 247; and providence, 257- 
258. 

Leisure class, 267, 268. 

Lenine, N., 296. 

Libido, 184. 

Lillie, R. S., 175 n., 178 n. 

Link, H. C, 287, 289 n. 

Locomotion instinct, 114. 

Loeb, Jacques, 97, 101-103, 277. 

Loyalty, 282. 

McDougall, William, 17, 18, 31 n., 84 n., 
105, 109 f., 131 f., 137, 159, 160, 188, 

2i82. 

Malthusian law, 9. 

Manchester Guardian, 296. 

Manipulation, 116. 

Marot, H., 277. 

Marshall, H. R., 139, 194, 224, 260. 

Means and end, 213-215. See Associa- 
tion. 

Mechanistic hypothesis in psychology, 
83f. 

Memory, Hobbes on, 37. See Association. 

Meyer, Max, 138 n. 



302 



INDEX 



Mill, James, 56 n., 94, 138 n. 

MiU, John Stuart, 10, 16, 94, 255, 273, 
274. 

Mitchell, Wesley C, 55 n., 59 n. 

Monotony, 287, 288. 

Moral will, 192 f. 

Moralists a source, 17. 

Morals and moral education, 198 f., 
218,226-228; Benthamon, 56, S7, 62- 
66. See Perfectibility. 

Mores, 119, 218. See Custom. 

Morgan, J. J. B., see Watson, J. B. 

Motive, psychological concept of, 14. 

Motives, common-sense analysis of, 16 f.; 
sources of material on, 16 f.; which 
are economic, 19; fundamental fac- 
tors in, 19 f .; relation to all psychology, 
25; definition and catalog by James 
Mill, 71; emotional and affective 
drives in, 134 f., development of, 188, 
189; instilling of new, 196 f.; two 
methods of training, 198, 199; in 
work, 270 f.; non-financial, 274 f.; 
Wagner's list, 275. 

Multiple reactions, 151. 

Muscular coordinations, 113. 

Music, 287, 289, 290. 

Needs, 216, 251, 252. 

Nervous system as common denomina- 
tor, 98. 

Newer point of view in psychology, 83 f . 

Non-financial motives, 274 f. 

Novelty, 116; in fashion, 219. See Curi- 
osity. 

Objective psychology, see subjective and 

objective aspects. 
Oppenheimer, F., 253. 
Opportunity cost, see Cost. 
Owen, Robert, 281. 

Pain, see Pleasure and pain. 

Parental affection, analyzed by MiU and 

Bain, 72, 73; instinctive elements, 117. 
Parker, Carleton, 129 n., 277. 
'Passions' of human nature (or 'of the 

soul') 16, 30 f., 32, 37, 39, 40, 43, 44 f. 
Patriotism, 12, 282. 
Patten, S. N., 26 n. 
Pavlov, 148. 

Payment by results, 272, 273, 292, 293. 
Perfectibility, 200 f., 276. See Moral 

education. 



Perry, R. B., 178, 181. 

Persistence, 104 f., 149, 150. 

Personality, 182 f. 

Persuasion, 225, 227. 

Peterson, J., 153 n., 167 n. 

Physiological correlates of pain and pleas- 
ure, 38 f. 

Physiological emphasis in psychology, 
83 f. 

Pillsbury, W. B., 170, 172, 177. 

Plasticity of human nature, 211, 222, 
223. 

Plato, 199. 

Play, 121 f.,270, 278, 280. 

Pleasure and Pain, 286; in common-sense 
analysis of motives, 20 f.; Aristotle's 
theory, 28; Bentham on, 55 f., 136 f., 
influence in learning, 154 f.; in Freu- 
dian psychology, 184; general role in 
motives, 136, 189 f., 235-238; and 
utility, 230; Weber-Fechner law, 233- 
234; in valuation, 240; in economics, 
245; in relation to work, 271, 272, 275, 
281, 282. 

Political theory a source, 17. 

Population, 9. 

Positive and negative reactions, 121, 
140 f. See Pleasure and pain . 

Practical uses of knowledge of motives, 
5, 9 f., 23,24. 

Praiseworthiness, desire for, 282, 283. 

Premises of economics, whether psychol- 
ogy is necessary for, 13. 

Prepotent responses, 223. 

Present state of economic psychology, 
205 f . 

Production, mental and physical aspects 
of, 4 f- 

Productivity of capital, 255 f., 261. See 
Diminishing productivity. 

Professional service, 273. 

Profits, 285; increasing through knowl- 
edge of human nature, 12; in relation 
to interest, 264. 

Propaganda for saving, 269. 

Propensity, see Instincts. 

Proportionality, principle of, 8; relation 
to all values, 8, 9. See Productivity. 

Propriety (Adam Smith) , 25 f . 

Providence, evolution of, see Thrift. 

Psychological parallelism, 84 f . 

Psychological schools of economics, 
208. 

Public service, 273, 293, 294. 



INDEK 



303 



Pugnacity, see Rage. 
Purpose, 177 f. 

Rage, 115, 281, 290. 

Rationality, 77, 80, 205, 246 f.; extent 
of, in human beings, 62 f.; connections 
with learning, 163 f. 

Rationalization, 59, 176, 186, 187. 

Reason and reasoning, 22, 47; learning 
process believed to explain, 163 f.; 
psychological process distinguished 
from logic, 167, 168; elements in proc- 
ess, 168 f.; alleged opposition to in- 
stinct, 192 f.; and valuation, 239, 240. 

Recession of stimulus, 104, 179 f. 

Reflex circuit (or arc), 87 f. 

Relations of psychology and economics, 

13 f. 
Religious motives, 198. 
Rents in interest, wages, and profits, 7. 

See Saver's rent. Work. 
Repression, 129, 182 f. 
Response, similarity to want, 14. 
Rhythm, 121, 224, 289, 290. 
Ricardo, Iron law of wages, 9. 
Risk, 268, 285. 

Roche-Agussol, M., 208 n., 237. 
Ross, E. A., 200 n. 
RusseU, B., 277. 
Russian communism, 295, 296. 

Salesmanship, psychology in, i, 2, 225, 
226. 

Sanctions, 65, 66. 

Satisfaction, 232. 

'Satisfiers' and 'annoyers,' 121, 138 n. 

Saver's rent, 264, 265. 

Saving, psychology in, 254 f.; marginal 
saver, 260 f.; influence of technical 
methods on, 254; equilibrium or func- 
tional theory, 260 f.; automatic, 260; 
reducing cost of, 264 f.; by public au- 
thority, 260. 

Self, 120, 161, 183. 

Self-abasement and self-assertion, 118- 
120. 

Self-interest, 11; Mill's criticism of Ben- 
tham, 79, 201. See Egoism. 

Senior, N. W., 10. 

Sensation, Hobbes on, 37. 

Sensationalism, 89 f . 

'Sentiment' (Shand), 160-162, 196 f. 

Sexual instincts, 117. 

Shand, A. F., 16, 160, 282. 



Shaw, A. W., 228 n. 

Sherrington, C. S., 133, 149, 154, 223. 

Sidgwick, Henry, 31 n. 

Slichter, S. H., 288, 291 n. 

Smith, Adam, 43 f., 215, 251, 255, 283. 

Social approval and disapproval, 118. 

Social art dependent on social science, 13. 

Social control, 295. See Moral educa- 
tion. 

Social influences in motive development, 
216-222. 

Social psychology, 86, 87, 202, 216, 217. 

Socialism, 265 f., 276, 292 f.; a question 
of motives, 9. 

Sombart, W., 254. 

Sources on motives, 16 f. 

Spencer, Herbert, 98, 288 n. 

Springs of action, 17, 57, 58. See Mo- 
tives. 

Standard of living, a psychological factor 
in wages, 9. 

Static and dynamic, 224 f. 

Statistical methods applied to motives, 
205, 206, 249, 264. 

Stiles, P. G., 286. 

Stout, G. F., 84 n., 132. 

Stuart, H. W., 258. 

Subconscious, 184 f. 

Subjective and objective aspects, of mo- 
tives, 83 f.; of wants, 217-218; of 
utility, 229 f.; of income, 237, 238; of 
valuation, 239 f . 

Sublimation, 129, 185. 

Substitution, 243. 

Suppression, see Repression. 

Sjonpathy, Adam Smith on, 54 f., 122. 

Tarde, G., 283. 

Tastes, 210. 

Taussig, F. W., 9, 215, 241, 263, 277, 
283, 294. 

Taxation, 265, 292. 

Test of solution in reasoning, 172 f. 

Theory of moral sentiments, 44 f . 

Thorndike, E. L., 91 n., 114 f., 138 n., 
139, 155, 16711., 201 n. ^ 

Thought as implicit behavior, 90. 

Thrift, development of, 254 f.; possi- 
bility of increasing, 267 f . 

Time preference, psychological basis of, 

257 f- 
Titchener, E. B., 84 n., 89, 138 n., 139, 

174, 194 n., 234. 
Tolman, E. C, 91 n. 



304 



INDEX 



Transfer, 210 f.; of interest or motive, 
186; associationist doctrine on, 77 f.; 
behaviorist account, 158 f . 

Trial and error in imagination, 164 f. 

Tropisms, 102, 103. 

Trotter, W., 118. 

Ubertragung, 16&-162, 214. 

Unconscious inference, 171, 221. See 
Association. 

Unconscious motives, 84, 184 f., 187, 
208; in utility, 230, 231. 

Utilitarian psychology, of Bentham,s4 f.; 
of the two Mills and Bain, 67 f. 

Utility 196; hedonistic interpretation, 
11; Adam Smith on, 44 f.; in explain- 
ing exchange, 213; in custom, 220 f.; 
psychological background of, 229 f.; 
measurement of, 229-232; diminish- 
ing, 232 f.; and demand, 239; curves 
of and demand curves, 241 f.; margi- 
nal, 243, 244; total, 244, 24s; calcula- 
tions of, 24s f.; diminishing in relation 
to sacrifice, 261. 

Valuation process, psychology of, 239 f.; 

differences in accuracy of calculations, 

246 f.; in saving, 258 f. 
Value, psychological problems in, 67; 

usages of, 229; non-economic, 250; 

in relation to wages, 292, 293. See 

Valuation process. 
Variable proportions, see Diminishing 

productivity. 
Veblen, T., 124 f., 214, 215, 223, 225, 

246, 277, 279, 291. 
Visual exploration, 116. 
Vocalization instincts, 114. 



Wages, 9. See Work. 

Wagner, Adolf, 9 n., 275. 

Wallas, Graham, 13 n., 18 n., 98 n., 
129 n., 192 n. 

Want, central unit both of psychology 
and economics, 14; subjective and 
objective sides, 207. 

Wantability, 229. 

Wants, psychology needed to explain, 3; 
primitive soon outgrown, 196 f.; psy- 
chology of, 207 f.; evolution of, 208 f.; 
influence on production, 209; redirec- 
tion of, 209; insatiability of, 215 f., 
292; classification of, 222 f.; artificial 
and natural elements in, 223; con- 
scious control of, 225 f.; present vs. 
future, 257 f. See Educability of 
motives. 

Warren, H.C., 178 n. 

Watson, J. B., 85, 87 n., 89, 90, 97 n., 
137 n., 148, 151, 15s, 186, 248; with 
J. J. B. Morgan, inf., 115, 159, 
162 n., 184, 197. 

Wealth, desire for, 212, 250-251; as mo- 
tive in work, 270 f . 

Wealth of Nations, 43 f . 

Weber-Fechner law, 233, 234. 

Wells, F.L., 162 n. 

Wicksteed, P. H., 230, 237. 

Woodworth, R. S., 14 n., 84 n., 85 n., 
107, 109 f., 150, 154, 156, 167 n., 178 n., 
188 f. 

Work, 11-13; and cost, 236, 237; margi- 
nal unit of, and rent elements, 271, 
291 f.; laissez-faire position on, 292, 

293- 
Workmanship, 116, 123 f., 224, 276 f. 

Yerkes, R. M. 



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